I have to admit that a little later this morning I will be possibly committing fraud. Or at least that is what some would allege. Yesterday I received my ballot for the upcoming election in Gallatin County in the mail. (I wonder if they also committed a crime by mailing it to me?) I quickly filled out my ballot since there was only one issue to be voted on in the County – a bond issue for a new law and justice center – and am now prepared to commit my criminal act by mailing in my ballot.
As I pointed out yesterday, the Bozeman Chronicle published an op-ed about the ridiculousness of the Republican driven voting-related legislation and activities that are going on in the state, particularly because the Republicans made almost a clean sweep of the elections in 2020. This is called the ‘theatre of the absurd.’ Our tax dollars at work to investigate and solve a problem that is provably not a problem. There was no evidence of wide spread voter fraud in the last election in Montana or any other state in the country – period! This is all part of the sleight of hand that I talked about yesterday. Use misdirection to make fear of election fraud magically appear and further verbal legerdemain to make Democrats chances of winning elections disappear. Abracadabra!
I don’t feel particularly badly about possibly committing voter fraud by mailing in my ballot because I see other prominent people defying laws. Steve Bannon, a close adviser of former President Trump’s and a vocal advocate of ‘burning the country down’ so that it can be rebuilt, has refused to comply with a legal Congressional subpoena. He is apparently citing ‘executive privilege’ which is a stretch since 1) Trump is no longer president, 2) Steve Bannon was not an employee of the Federal government in any time frame close to January 6th and 3) Joe Biden, who is president, has said that he would not invoke executive privilege in this case. Given that the Republicans try to bill themselves as the party of ‘law and order’, one would think that some of them might speak up about such an egregious act of defiance against a legal subpoena. Silence!!
But, getting back to voting, the fact is, I have been voting by mail for years. I can’t even remember the last time I went to a polling place. However, when you think about it, voting by mail or even standing in line at a polling place are pretty arcane ways of voting given all of the technology we have today. Yes, cyber crime is a real thing but, even with that threat, how many of us 1) buy stuff on line and pay with credit cards using ‘secure transactions’, 2) pay our bills with electronic banking, 3) watch banks transfer billions of dollars around the world every single day, 4) use our phones in place of a paper boarding pass on airplanes and the list goes on and on.
Just as an example of how pervasive on-line transactions are in our lives, Amazon represented 45% of all e-commerce in the United States in 2019.1 And, keep in mind, that is almost all done online. In an average hour (and this is 24 hours/day) Amazon processes about 17 million dollars in transactions.1 Almost our entire commerce system is based online and yet we cannot find the wherewithal to develop a secure online voting system that would provide access to virtually all eligible voters in this country.
Rather than spend all of the effort and money passing laws to solve a problem that doesn’t exist, i.e., widespread voter fraud, the sole point of which is to make it harder for some segment of the population to vote, a true democratic government would be looking at ways to make voting easier and more accessible to more people. The frustrating thing is that the technology exists to make that happen, and we are refusing to move into the 21st century.
If the United States government is comfortable moving trillions of dollars around each and every day electronically, it is hard to understand why the powers that be cannot develop an electronic voting system. Of course, that won’t happen any time soon for the sole reason that if it were available, it would be almost impossible to restrict voting the way that it is being done today. The threat of hackers will be the excuse that is used to persuade the general public why this can’t be done. And, while hacking is a real threat, I’m convinced if you put enough smart people on it, you could minimize that threat.
Given the cryptographic capabilities in the National Security Agency (NSA) and the know how in some of the world’s preeminent technology companies, it could be done. How can you argue that its safe for the Federal Reserve to move billions of dollars around the world electronically and it is not possible to develop a safe electronic voting system? However, like I said, it won’t happen any time soon, because it is not in the best interest of the people who wish to retain control!
Of course, even a robust electronic voting system will not necessarily be enough to ensure a robust democracy. Gerrymandering must also be addressed. Right here in Montana, we are in the middle of carving the state into two districts for Congressional representation. Up until the last election, we only had one Congressional Representative due to the sparse population of the state. However, due to the increase in population in Montana over the last decade we will now have two representatives.
A commission is now in the throws of trying to finalize this map and, as expected, the Republicans are trying to offer up districts that will split the vote in their favor. Missoula and Bozeman are two Democratic islands within the state. Some of the maps that are being proposed would actually split the city of Bozeman between the two Congressional districts! This defies common sense but would certainly provide an advantage to the Republicans who already control the state and seem hell bent on taking any and all actions to ever prevent a Democrat from ever holding office in Montana again.
Well, if you will excuse me, I am going to go commit potential voter fraud by dropping my ballot in the mail box. I can only hope that the measures introduced by Postmaster General DeJoy have not adversely impacted the pony express so badly that my ballot fails to make it to the Gallatin County Election Administrator in time. I guess I should take solace in the fact that the ballot is mailed to the local Election Administration office. The way things are going, in the next election cycle, we’ll probably just mail the ballots directly to the office of the Montana State Republicans and skip all of these unnecessary steps!