… that entire hubbub in the Federal Civil-Rights Panel Investigation of the Florida Nov 2000 elections is the whole notion of VOTER RESPONSIBILITY! Much was made of the ‘abandoning of local election supervisors’; Governor vetoed voter-education campaigns and confusing ballots and the ‘voters had to pay the price’.
What price and at what cost to the voter? Which voter – the informed voter, the legal voter or their opposite?
Voters who participate in an entire election cycle -primaries runoffs and Presidential elections know at their first visit to the polls (during the party primary) if they are properly registered in their precinct. If there is a problem with their registration the voter should have ample time to correct it between the primary election and Presidential election time. It should be well argued that it is the voter’s responsibility to ensure his or her own registration is in ‘proper order’ before journeying to the polls to cast a ballot. Furthermore, it is also the voter’s responsibility to understand from whom and what he is casting his ballot!
What’s to be made of the enfranchisement of the ill informed voter or the illegal voter – besides the obvious erosion of voter confidence and the undermining of the electoral process?
How can any republic sustain such an assault on the very source of it’s existence – Power derived from the will of the people by having the will of the people subverted by conferring legitimate status on illegitimate ballots?
An illegitimate ballot is not (as some might think) an honest disagreement with a particular point of view (arrived at by careful consideration of the facts) or political frame of reference; but rather a swindle of the public trust and a fraud perpetrated on the governed by looters seeking criminal suppression of the legal will of the governed for their own illegitimate gain.
