A few words ahead of the New York Times magazine, which will run a major story about citizens being deprived of their vote.
In 1692, terrorized Puritans threw away their normal legal process in favor of an emergency court that presumed guilt until proven innocent. Within a year, nineteen innocent people had been hanged, one man tortured to death, and hundreds of lives disrupted and ruined. A repentant leadership concluded after the fact that it would be better if ten, or even one hundred guilty parties were set free, than that one innocent person be falsely condemned. They learned this the hard way.
When Katherine Harris was Secretary of State in Florida in the year 2000, she set up a process where the voter rolls were purged of alleged invalid names. Hundreds of registered voters were told that they were not on the voter list. Guilty until proved innocent, and you can no more give them back the votes they were denied than you can unhang the convicted witches.
This was a huge violation of our democratic process, and like the abandonment of New Orleans, it’s a wound so deep we have not even been able to deal with it.
The coming election will only bring more doubt and divisiveness if we don’t work, state by state, to ensure that every vote is counted.
Recurring Nightmare 
Despite our new found technological prowess, vote counting my not have risen past the edict of May Ruchard Daley Senior, of Chicago fame: “Vote early and vote often.” Ms Harris was certainly concerned about style, but it was her own and not the interest of Florids’s voters. We can do better and should do better. However, voting is a serious responsibility, so serious that some nations actually fine citizens who do not vote. While I am not suggesting we do the same, I do believe that real votes need real registration and real registration must have serious criteria for identification of legitimate voters. Without a legitimate vote, there can no be legitimacy of representative goverment.
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in rhode island we register, and sign when we vote, and vote on a paper ballot.
yes, stuffing the ballot boxes with invalid votes is also stealing votes away, and destructive of our rights. we need to have an accurate registration process.
i am sorry that all the talk about reforming our election system after the mess in 2000 was more talk than action.
and like they say, to err is human, to really mess things up you need a computer.
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