5 day forecast
Extend Pennsylvania's voting period
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I resent the voter ID requirement because it essentially accuses voters of voting fraud when election history points to fraud or suspected fraud rarely being committed by common voters but rather by those in control of the system (such as with electronic voting machines). The voters are not the threat. The threat is the system.
A change that might more effectively help voters would be to lengthen voting in Pennsylvania to a full week. This would be an historic improvement to today's iron-fisted, controlled and narrow window that allows voting on only one quickie 13-hour day during the work week. In this environment, with more time to check, maybe a voter ID law might make more sense. Plus, system-wide corruption or theft and deception might be discovered more easily and trust restored in the system.
Trust would be restored because more people would have more time to verify processes and reveal attempts at fraud. These additional days would allow more time to demonstrate and prove the integrity of the system as polls closed each day to count votes and then reopened the next day.
Most energizing to our democracy, of course, would be more freedom to campaign and vote together, to have more time to bring people to the polls and experience once again the urgency to participate.
MITCH BJERKE
Whitehall
First Published September 10, 2012 12:00 am
