Reply #79: That's the better solution. [View All]

Instead of looking for ways to punish people who run up against barriers to voting, remove the barriers and find out why there is resistance. I'd be happy to do away with Columbus's Day of Genocide and have election day instead, and put an additional day on there as well that falls on a weekend. I'd like to drop the restrictions on absentee ballots, so a person doesn't have to lie to get one "just in case."

I'd like to see free daycare at polling places, and free public transit on the voting holiday, and not just in urban areas. Where I grew up, it was about 10 miles to the nearest poll. If you have a broken car and it's a cow town with no taxi service, you're out of luck, particularly if it's snowing or if you have a few kids. When I was really small, we didn't have a car at all, we had a little red wagon that my mom pulled us kids in when she went to the grocery store, and she packed the groceries into the wagon around us. You can't pull two kids in a wagon 20 miles round trip on icy roads.

On top of that, lots of people aren't going to go through any hardship at all until they get rid of the electronic vote-eating machines. How do you convince a person to stand in line for 6 hours when they know the machine can be programmed to show any vote count the programmers want it to show? That's not democracy; it's a sham, and a lot of people are smart enough to understand that their vote is worthless if it isn't counted. So it's an exercise in futility that gives fake credibility to the illusion that our voting system is fair.