Curing the Voting Process

“Oops! I just filled in the wrong circle on my ballot. What should I do?”

We are all human and so, if the above scenario happens before you leave your polling place, you should be allowed – with the approval and supervision of an elections official – to destroy that incorrect ballot and complete a new one.

In Florida, for instance, you get three strikes and then you’re out!

However, once you leave your polling place, all bets are off. You should not be permitted to come back to “cure” your ballot… and under no circumstances should an elections official or a political partisan be allowed to call you and ask you to return to make a correction (or two).

Simply put, if you are too stupid or too careless to correctly fill out your ballot given three tries, better luck next time. In other words, try again next election cycle… not the next day.

Can you imagine taking a multiple-choice test in school and coming back 24 hours later, demanding that your teacher allow you to change your answers? Or worse yet, having your professor contact you a few days after you have handed in your exam to offer you the chance to correct your mistakes before your final grade is recorded?

Not only have we made voting too easy in this country by mailing out ballots to everyone who asks, but we now send them freely and en masse to people who don’t request one. How crazy is that? And then we act surprised when people try to vote multiple times – once via mail and once at the polls – or someone else votes by mail using your ballot, thereby disenfranchising you on Election Day.

While I am at it, can any reasonable person tell me why we print ballots in so many different languages? In California, for example, voters this year were able to request a ballot in the following languages (and many more): Arabic, Armenian, Hmong, Korean, Persian, Spanish, Syriac or Tagalog.

Yes, I know that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was amended in 1975 to say that jurisdictions must provide language assistance if more than 10,000 or 5% of voting-age citizens belong to a “single language minority group, have depressed literacy rates and don’t speak English very well.” But my guess is that – 45 years ago – we didn’t have dozens of different “language minority groups”. And the amended law was meant to be a temporary fix, not a permanent one.

Wouldn't it be better - and more cost effective in the long run - to teach everyone to speak, read, and comprehend English... and then to print ballots in a single language?  Or to make a working knowledge of English a requirement for citizenship and therefore, for voting?

I am going to go out on a limb and say that no other country on the face of the earth prints its ballots in 20 or more different languages. Don’t believe me? Just try asking for a Hmong or Tagalog ballot in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, or Great Britain. Or a Spanish one in Canada, for that matter, where the ballots are printed in English and French... and that’s it.

Can we please just simplify – and thereby, safeguard – the entire voting process in America? By law, Election Day is the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November… period. Several early voting days (not weeks) should be permitted. Only active duty military serving overseas and nursing home residents should be able to apply for absentee ballots. All mail-in ballots must be returned by the close of the polls on Election Day. Read my lips: no exceptions and no extensions!

And yes, every vote cast electronically should have a paper trail. You know, just in case someone tries to cheat and steal an election.