At 7:46 PM -0500 11/10/00, William H. Geiger III wrote:
In <a05010416b632437994d9@[207.111.241.50]>, on 11/10/00 at 06:32 PM, Tim May <tcmay@got.net> said:
I have no idea.
The solution has been obvious for a long time: absentee ballots must be received by the close of business on the polling day. Those who know they are going to be out of their voting area must mail their ballots in time to arrive. This eliminates this particular hazard.
Eliminate them completely would be an even simpler solution. Too many people give elections the proper respect that they deserve. You go and plan your vacation at voting time too bad you made your choice. The only ones that have any legitimate excuse for not being in the town that they are registered to vote is those that are either on military deployment or in the diplomatic corps. Polling stations can be set up on military bases and US Embassies to accommodate the majority that fall into those catagories.
I would support this as well. The craziest aspect of "absentee ballots" is that some people move away from their original registration places and then vote absentee for years, even decades. My father and mother, for example, voted absentee with a California ballot for 15 years of living in Virginia, France, and Maryland. Only when our family lived in France for a year could they have justifiably claimed to be "absentee residents." And this is not rare. Absentee ballots are a lot more than being about people who are temporarily away from their homes. --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.