The sun rises in the west!
The sun rises in the west!
Voter fraud cost me the election!
Repeating a lie doesn’t magically transform it into the truth. The truth is that the Republican Party’s presidential candidates haven’t won the popular vote since Ronald Reagan’s day. The only thing keeping them competitive in federal (including the Electoral College) and state elections is gerrymandered voting districts. The Democratic Party doesn’t care; they’re busy gerrymandering voter districts in the states where they control the state legislature. Both parties are happy to suppress voting rights to the other side’s supporters.
It’s the type of greedy, short-sighted and unpatriotic behavior that motivates warring factions in third world countries, most recently in South Sudan where the two guerrilla forces turned political parties have wrecked their country trying to sate their piggish appetites at the trough of public patronage. They couldn’t care less that their citizens are dying from bullets, disease and starvation, not to mention rape, murder and pillage.
The U.S. is the leader of the free world. We deserve an electoral system that reflects that status instead of one appropriate for deadbeats skulking in the bush.
There is a better way and the prototype is called “Aadhar”. Aadhar is an electronic database created by the federal government of India in a public-private partnership. Every person in India is given a retina scan and a thumb scan and issued a 12-digit unique identifier. This digital ID is linked to a card that looks like a credit card. The card is tied to a personal bank account which allows poor Indians to receive their government aid directly. Aadhar is already paying for itself due to the amount of government corruption it has eliminated.
Aadhar is also the platform for an ecosystem of digital commerce. With their card and a retina scan, Indians can apply for a bank loan, pay their rent, buy groceries, a new refrigerator or TV and pay their cell phone bill.
The U.S. could create its own version of Aadhar that would include a voter registration application. Voters could register electronically and then vote electronically.
Amazon, Apple, and Google, to name three American tech companies have the expertise to help set up an American version of Aadhar. We could use the database as a platform for government services and private industry. Privacy could be protected with beefed up privacy laws which need to be updated anyway.
So what’s really stopping us from instituting an electronic system that could reduce the threat of voter fraud while simultaneously speeding up election results?
No politician in this country gives enough of a damn about America to put the country’s interest above her/his own interests. They’d rather be tribal twits screaming about voter fraud and fighting over their turn at the trough of public patronage. We’re a first world country with third world pols. And that’s why I pessimistically believe an American Aadhar will never happen and we’ll never fix our broken electoral system.
About Norma Shirk
My company, Corporate Compliance Risk Advisor, helps employers (with up to 50 employees) to create human resources policies and employee benefit programs that are appropriate to the employer’s size and budget. The goal is to help small companies grow by creating the necessary back office administrative structure while avoiding the dead weight of a bureaucracy. To read my musings on the wacky world of human resources, see the HR Compliance Jungle (www.hrcompliancejungle.com) which alternates on Wednesday mornings with my history blog, History By Norma, (available at http://www.normashirk.com). To read my musings on a variety of topics, see my posts on Her Savvy (www.hersavvy.com).
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Susan Hammonds-White, EdD, LPC/MHSP
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