Damn Jacoby's

First we have Jeff Jacoby writing columns for the Boston Globe and not adhering to the Massachusetts liberal line (read a few of his columns and you will see that he probably has no friends in Boston,) and now we have Mark Jacoby allegedly committing voter registration fraud because he lied about his place of residence. This is the worst case of registration fraud I've heard about it. Acorn only registers imaginary people, dead people and felons; this guy had the temerity to claim he was a resident of California when he hasn't lived there in a few years.

Anywho, good for the California legal authorities for stepping down hard on voter registration fraud. This should not be acceptable practice by anyone. I look forward to reading about them arresting Acorn voter registration workers.

Just for the record, Jeff and I have established that we are probably not related, and Mark Jacoby is my first cousin, but not the Mark Jacoby arrested in California. Oh, and Cousin Mark who posts here is not Mark Jacoby either. He is not nearly fired up enough to go out and commit voter fraud.

ID to vote is ok

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld an Indiana law requiring identification in order to vote. Crawford v. Marion County Election Board was decided by a 6-3 majority. If you follow the court you know who the dissenting justices were (Breyer, Souter and Ginsburg.) It is now legal for the states to pass a statute requiring positive identification in order to cast a ballot. The purpose is to discourage voter fraud. Oddly this is a measure supported by Republicans, and vilified by Democrats. It does not seem onerous to require identification to vote, when you must have it to write a check, drive a car, buy a drink or board a plane. Remember, it is not necessary to be a citizen to have a drivers license, so ID is not dispositive of the right to vote. It merely verifies that the voter's name is the same as that on the registration.

I think the real problem the Democratic Party has with this is that it makes it much more difficult to commit vote fraud. That is the same problem the Party has with electronic voting machines. There is a complaint that the machines can be manipulated, but no one ever demonstrates how to do so in a way that is not obvious. I might be wrong about this, a highly doubtful possibility, but in actual cases of proven voter fraud, it is about 90% likely the fraud advantages a Democrat. (I am not talking about the constant accusations by Democrats that Republicans commit fraud, which never prove out, but actual litigated and proven cases.)

It is about time some action be taken to clean up the voting process. Election fraud is not a problem in many areas, but where it is a problem, it is huge. Districts where more votes are cast than there are residents of voting age, double voting in New York and Florida by retirees, etc.

Vote fraud has been with us since the country began and, I am sure, will continue, but photo identification is a step in the right direction.