Issue 124 Legal Corruption: Voting 2 July 19, 2013

Many of you are familiar with the concept of an absentee ballot. It allows someone to vote in an election despite that person not being able to vote on the day of an election. You fill out a form, sometimes a few months in advance, and then submit your vote. One problem, this is another form of legal corruption.

Why it is corruption?: The reason that absentee ballots are a form of corruption is based on how and when they can be submitted. With them being sent in so early it becomes easy to add additional absentee ballots later on, because they can be submitted up to a certain day. This means, based on an absentee ballot count, these public officials have in fact calculated the outcome of an election and thus know the winner and the loser. As such they have additional absentee ballots ready and waiting to be filled out to give a boost to their losing candidate. Also, some absentee ballots are conveniently "found" in "storage rooms" which are later used to pervert the integrity of the vote. In essence, the entire concept of a democratic election fails due to corruption.

Immoral votes: Absentee ballots are also in a sense immoral. They have a person vote prior to hearing out both candidates. People really don't know who a candidate truly is until right before the day of election, so how can they make truly informed vote weeks prior. While some places may let people change their absentee ballot vote, the hurdles to do so and the possibility that their previous vote may suddenly reappear for their original vote are always in play.

What should be done: Only one solution can eliminate this problem that has plagued U.S. elections since the absentee ballot was first invented. The solution is to eliminate the absentee ballot altogether. Some of you may be saying that I am denying a persons right to vote based on this solution. However, a person who chooses not to be around to vote on the day of an election has voluntarily given up their right to vote in that election. I am not denying anything, for they are denying the privilege of voting to themselves. It must be understood that elections are unto themselves a privilege to participate in, and that absentee ballots are a human invention that were actually designed to sway an election in the first place. Basically they where designed to boost a candidates chances of winning by letting voters vote as early as possible especially when they cannot show up on the day of an election (as intended). But they still violate the integrity of the vote, irrespective of the corruption involved. So by getting rid of this modern flaw in the system of elections we restore at least some integrity to the electoral system.

Conclusion: We as Americans have always claimed the moral high ground, but we ourselves at the political level have become hypocrites. With the system as corrupt as it is, we cannot afford our elections to become rigged any further than they already have. The vote should be on a single day and only that day per year. All votes are counted thoroughly to prevent any chances of error. Once counted it should be as simple as announcing the winner. But in today's politics, it is far from simple. So we have to get back to that simplicity that affords integrity, with the winner of an election winning on merit, not some absentee ballots conveniently found in a back room.