Dead Man Voting !

I have never heard of this "provisional voting" thing. All I know is that, if you don't have a driver's license or a state ID card, you can sign this affidavit on the back of your ballot application, and they let you vote. All the affidavit says is that you don't have a driver's license or a state ID card.

Last I heard, they were letting dead people vote in Chicago, but that was a long time ago, maybe it's been changed by now. Seriously, though, I keep hearing the assertion that there is no evidence of voter fraud in this country. How would anybody know if there was? I don't imagine that a fraudulent voter would brag about it after the fact. All they really know for sure is that nobody has been caught at it lately. 

When I first moved to Northern Michigan, voter registration was handled by the township clerks, but now the Secretary of State's office does it. When you go to renew your driver's license, they ask you if you want to register to vote while you're there. You don't need to re-register unless you change your address or fail to vote for a number of years. The last time we moved was in 2000, and the Secretary of State was handling it by then. I don't remember it being much of a hassle, I had to go there anyway to change my address on my driver's license, and they changed my voter registration at the same time. I don't remember them giving me a card, but we got new ones in the mail a few years ago, and they came from our township clerk. I have never been asked to show my card in my life, and I don't even carry it in my wallet anymore.

Michigan driver's licenses have a zip strip on them like credit and debit cards. An election worker takes your license and zips it through a machine that is connected to their computer. We buy our hunting and fishing licenses the same way. All the license dealers have one of those machines. There is no paperwork to fill out, they zip your driver's license, the machine spits out your hunting or fishing license with all the data printed on it, and all you have to do is sign it. If you don't have a driver's license, you can get a state ID card that works the same way, and the Secretary of State handles that too. This whole matter could be resolved if the Secretary of State issued voter registration cards with photos and zip strips on them. They already have all the equipment, so how hard could it be?

Another thing I have wondered about is, when they do a recount, it never comes out exactly the same as the original count. It's usually not off by much, but why should it be off at all? The last time I remember was when a guy lost a seat on the County Road Commission by five votes and, when they recounted, he won by one vote, my vote, so don't let anybody tell you that one vote doesn't matter. Anyway, we vote with digital scanners. The machine sucks your ballot in like a dollar bill changer, counts it, then delivers it to a box at the bottom of the machine. If they need to do a recount, they take the paper ballots out of the box and count them by hand. I'm pretty sure that two or three people count them separately and they all have to come up with the same number. If they don't, I suppose they count them again. My point is, why doesn't the digital scanner count them correctly in the first place? Those things cost money you know, and they are supposed to work better than a human. If they don't, let's just scrap them out and go back to counting the paper ballots by hand.