As you may have gathered from all my numerous and lengthy posts, I like to blog. I am also willing to try out new things. So when I was writing a post and saw this new orange doohickey, I decided to check it out. What I discovered is that WordPress now provides the capability to add polls to my posts. That seemed like a nice feature. So I decided to try it out. See here.
Well, I promptly got a comment that expressed doubt about the accuracy of this new polling device. I suppose accuracy is important. If a headcount is not going to be accurate, what is the point of counting heads? So I looked into the matter. Here is what I found.
My new orange doohickey does include some capability to block repeat voters. However, even WordPress admits these blocking feature are problematic. So I decided to go with the recommended setting. After all, the experts know what they are doing, right?
To get the poll started, I voted. Then I decided to see how that blocking worked. To vote a second time, I had to delete my cookie cashe. Since that struck me as a bit too easy to get around, I decide I had better block by cookie and by IP address.
Wondering how well this new blocking worked, I decided to try voting from work. The polling device would not let me vote! At that point, I decided the experts must be right. To avoid troubling my readers, I went back to the recommended setting. Sure enough, after I deleted my cookie cashe, I could vote again. Whew! What a relief to have taken care of that problem!
Nonetheless, I am still concerned. And I figure there is only one way to determine the truth. So I have decided to take another poll. 😀
WHAT IS YOUR OPINION?
On to a more serious note.
The controversy over ACORN is no laughing matter.
The U.S. Supreme Court quashed attempts to force hundreds of thousands of newly registered voters to undergo added scrutiny in Ohio, potentially dealing a setback to John McCain less than three weeks before the election.
The unanimous decision set aside a lower-court order that would require election officials to examine more closely the legitimacy of many new voter registrations.
No Republican has won the White House without carrying Ohio, and polls there currently show the race a toss-up between Sen. McCain and Barack Obama. In a close race, the difference could be the hundreds of thousands of new voters registered there. A disproportionate number of new voters throughout the U.S. are registering as Democrats.
“It remains our belief that American citizens should be guaranteed that their legitimate votes are not wiped away by illegally cast ballots,” McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said in a statement Friday. (from here)
Note that the court decided the case based upon the issue of jurisdiction, not whether voter fraud is taking place.
For the sake of our economy, the security of our borders, and to stop voter fraud, we need to be able to positively identify people. We already have excellent biometric technologies available (This article provides an explanation of the implications.). There is no good reason citizens should be not be required to properly identify themselves both when they register to vote and when they vote. Instead of being all too commonplace, identity fraud should be and can be made rare.
Voter fraud should be almost unheard of in this nation. Each of us does have the right to a secret ballot, but none of us has the right to vote more than once. Consider the obvious. When we vote, we give over the protection of our FREEDOM and control of TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to the people we select to lead us. When it is so necessary to protect ourselves and our families from despicable tyrants and thieves, it is folly to spare the small amount of effort needed to effect a reliable system of voter identification.
Hopefully, that is the direction we are headed.
Far from settling the debate over voter identification, the Supreme Court ruling on Monday upholding Indiana’s voter ID law is likely to lead to more laws and litigation, voting experts said.
Lawmakers in at least four states may seek to pass stricter regulations in the next year or so, the experts said. In response, voting rights groups might sue on behalf of individuals or groups in an effort to exempt them. (from here)
Do we have a right to laziness? Does our right to privacy extend to not letting people know who we are when we drive, vote, apply for a job, or ask for credit? Of course not! The motives of any political party or organization that fights against proper citizen identification should questioned. When they demand that we behave so stupidly, is it not obvious what too many of these people expect to gain?
Cartoons from here.
Citizen Tom 
Oaks give off the worst pollen, too! Ahchoo!
I was just being a wise a _ _ Tom. Good explanation, though! And agreed.
kgotthardt – It is not a matter of competence. The issue is authority. There are good reasons for the fact we are a federation.
Bad leaders seek to divide and conquer the People. To protect themselves, the People must divide leadership tasks and sometimes pit leaders against one another.
One way we do this is by assigning different tasks and functions to different levels of government. Although such a task breakdown can sometimes be inefficient, the breakdown helps prevent any one person from acquiring too much power.
Consider what our federation does with respect to the problem of election fraud. Because local governments generally have the responsibility of gathering and counting ballots, it is difficult for state and federal officials to perpetrate voting fraud. To succeed, people in multiple counties have to be suborned into the plot.
No, the Feds certainly aren’t capable of counting anything at this point, are they?
kgotthardt – Whenever we have a close election, some controversy is unavoidable. To minimize such controversy, the People of each county and state (counting heads is not a Federal responsibility) need to take responsibility.
Recall we’ve been fighting voter fraud since the inception of this country and got a rude awakening when suddenly, Florida forgot how to count. This isn’t a new issue, unfortunately, and yes, one would think we would have been able to move beyond it through technology.
Thanks for checking the poll, Tom! I see many of us don’t believe online polls are accurate. To tip the scales, I will probably vote several more times 🙂