[EL] Line Standers --not just heroic but Hiatoric

[Thomas J. Cares]

I have doubts that any of the five ideas in the WaPo article Rick
link<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/11/08/five-ways-to-cut-long-election-lines/>ed
to would *dramatically* improve wait times.

I wonder if we could do something bigger, like just mail everyone a
vote-by-mail ballot, and have the federal government fully subsidize return
postage for all VBM ballots. Voters could discard the ballots and vote at
the polls as if they'd never received them, or mail them, or return them to
any polling place in their county.

With this, I'd bet less (maybe a great deal less) than one-third of ballots
would actually be filled out at polling places, and that the overwhelming
majority would either mail their ballot or simply drop it off at a polling
place on election day (with the convenience of being able to go to one near
their job, or favorite grocery store, and not necessarily the one in their
home precinct - and not having to wait!).

I suspect the argument against this would be the potential for fraud (I'm
not sure that's meritorious though; diligent implementation could probably
prevent fraud).

There's a good argument for better early voting policies, but a
disadvantage to early voting is that something may happen in the last days
of the campaigns that could cause an (objective) voter to change their mind
on at least one thing on their ballot (I'm a permanent vote by mail voter,
but whenever I'm certain I'm going to be in LA County on election day, I
hold my ballot until the election to allow for that contingency). It would
certainly seem helpful if all voters had the automatic option to fill out
their ballot at home and quickly drop it off on election day.


Thomas Cares

On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 8:01 AM, Roy Schotland
<schotlan at law.georgetown.edu>wrote:

> We haven’t sung enough about the Line Standers, who stand among the
> all-time proof of how much people –as grass-roots as can be-- care about
> the Right to Vote.  ****
>
> ** **
>
> Roy A. Schotland****
>
> Professor Emeritus****
>
> Georgetown Law Center****
>
> ****
>
> ** **
>
>
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