When you ask: "So can I extrapolate from this that Diebold's offices ought to have been seized by the FBI some time ago and its executives spirited off to Gitmo for summary waterboarding?"

I have to wonder if you were one of the geniuses that "extrapolated" that the best way to bring Al Queda to justice was to invade Iraq.

You sound like you have a real extrapolation problem on your hands there, pal.

Recent studies, by people interested in and motivated to find voter fraud, have not produced any significant amount of evidence for voter fraud. It is reasonable to conclude that there is currently not a significant amount of voter fraud.

On the other hand, recent studies have found significant amounts of voter disenfranchisement.

I recognize that there are costs associated with policy decisions. I would probably support a small amount of voter disenfranchisement to produce a large reduction in voter fraud. However, I can't support -- and I don't see how anyone else can support -- a large amount of voter disenfranchisment to yield a tiny reduction in voter fraud.

I doubt that many proponents of voter ID cards support it because it prevents people from voting. I do believe, though, that a large number of people who support voter ID cards do so because it produces miniscule cuts in fraud while only disenfrachising the "wrong" sort of voters.

Oh people. Penumbras and emanations isn't exactly a popular theory -- the right to privacy is no longer based on this theory. Griswold was the only case that used it, and a standard mentioned in a concurrence to the case, is now the standard for everything -- namely "freedoms without which we could not have liberty or freedom, the denial of which would offend our concept of ordered liberty" or something like that. So, Penumbras = RIP. No longer used by the court or petitioners.

But, i think that even without penumbras, the 19th amendment, by itself, creates an exlicit right to vote by implication. If there were no right to vote, why would the amendment say "the right to vote shall not be denied..."? Plus, you could make a very compelling history, traditions and customs argument. No one is about to suspend elections.

As for ID cards, while in theory it seems like a good idea, i really don't like where it will lead to. think about it, your license to drive cars, a very specific task, has now become your ticket into everything from r-rated movies, credit cards, checks, liquor, cigarettes, strip clubs, anytime you need to prove your identity. I think the ID card could be misused by our government very easily, too easily. And, the argument that it's a way to stop elderly, poor and minorities from voting is also compelling.

The House Judiciary Committee wrote a report about what went wrong in Ohio in 2004:

In Mahoning County, one precinct in Youngstown recorded a negative 25 million votes.

In Mercer County, one voting machine showed that 289 people cast punch card ballots, but only 51 votes were recorded for president. The county’s website appeared to show a similar anomaly, reporting that 51,818 people cast ballots but only 47,768 ballots were recorded in the presidential race, including 61 write-ins, meaning that approximately 4,000 votes, or nearly 7%, were not counted for a presidential candidate.

In Youngstown, the Washington Post reported that their

investigation revealed 25 electronic machines transferred an unknown number of Kerry votes to the Bush column. Jeanne White, a veteran voter and manager at the Buckeye Review, an African American newspaper, stepped into the booth, pushed the button for Kerry – and watched her vote jump to the Bush column. “Every time I tried to vote for the Democratic Party Presidential vote the machine went blank. I had to keep trying, it took 5 times.”

Unofficial Results, Ohio Secretary of State website, Nov. 30, 2004. There are a number of peculiar results that appear to run counter to the established principle that downballot party candidates receive far less votes than the presidential candidate of the same party. These

results also are counter to the statewide trend in Ohio, where Kerry received 48.5% of the vote to 46.6% for Connally. In Adams County, John Kerry barely received more votes than Connally, 4189 to 4010. In Auglaize County, Connolly received more votes than Kerry, 7312 to 5729. Similar results were tallied in Brown County, with Kerry receiving 7058 votes to Connally’s 7407; in Clermont County, Connally received 29,464 to Kerry’s 25,318; in Darke County, Connally received 8817 to Kerry’s 6683; in Highland County, Connally received 6119 to Kerry’s 6012; in Mercer County, Connally received 6607 to Kerry’s 4924; in Miami County, Connally received 17,206 to Kerry’s 17,039; in Putnam County, Connally received 4,785 votes to Kerry’s 4,348.

It appears implausible that 5,000 voters waited in line to cast votes for an underfunded Democratic Supreme Court candidate and then declined to cast a vote for the most wellfunded Democratic Presidential campaign in history. [Emphasis theirs]

On election day, a computerized voting machine in ward 1B in the Gahana precinct of Franklin County recorded a total of 4,258 votes for President Bush and 260 votes for Democratic challenger John Kerry. However, there are only 800 registered voters in that Gahana precinct.

Read more:

http://truthout.org/Conyersreport.pdf

(Although it's a "liberal" website, the link goes directly to a government document with hundreds of citations.)

There are ways of preventing voting fraud without including ID. Asking people their names, verify their address, and sign on the line means they can only vote once. There's more fraud on the political and beaurocratic level, stuffing rolls with dead peoples' names and purging rolls of 'felons' or anyone with similar names. Trust the voters and make sure the people in control can't continue to perpetrate fraud any more. Voters aren't the ones trying to get elected, political parties are.

I would argue that the US has a more serious problem, the lack of people willing to vote. During the primaries last week, states were lucky if 39 percent of their registered voters actually voted.

If the concern is that in a tight election, individuals without voter ID wouldn't be able to vote, if you could get the number of people voting up to close to 80%, then the effects of group disenfranchesment would be less.

You could also make it easier for people to get a photo ID, for example, with the eldery, by stating that if you get social security and you're over 64, then you get a photo ID without having to worry about providing a birth certificate or passport. There are plenty of ways of proving that you are a US citizen without the more drastic measures mentioned by the republicans such as providing a passport or birth certificate. The democrats should beat the republicans at their own game by making it easier to obtain the ID.

Personally I think the democrats should agree to the photo ID requirement but attach a rider to the bill fining individuals who don't vote, as they do in Australia. How can we claim to be a democracy with so little individual parcipation?

If more people voted in 2000, we wouldn't be in the mess we are now.