These 2 guys should work for the New England Patriots, they would fit in great there, cause cheating is away of life there.

The sad part is, all the teams cheat — in one way or another. When you pretend you made a catch, you’re cheating. When you take steroids, you’re cheating. When you fudge the injury reports, you’re cheating.

All the teams cheat. The Patriots just happen to be World Champions at it.

No, just ignorant. ^__^ I, at least, just assumed I wasn’t able to change my registration. To be fair, no one told me otherwise.

It’s much harder for somebody to coerce or buy your vote once it is secret. In many third world countries, the opposition tells voters to take the government’s money and then vote however they want. That’s the whole reason why we instituted the secret ballot in America, to protect the rights of those with less social power. That’s the reason why I am so adamant that secrecy not be compromised. If a vote is to mean anything, it must be secret. And yes, that means I think the caucuses are shameful and undemocratic.

How else to we protect low wage voters from having their bosses tell them that if they don’t vote the way they want, they’ll be fired? How else do we protect immigrants from having their votes stolen by machine bosses?

Educate people, make the ballots available in multiple languages, perhaps even make early voting available. But the actual act of voting must be secret and secure if we are to protect any meaningful franchise and therefore the integrity of the whole process.

The vast majority of documented vote fraud has been through vote-by-mail. Yes, I want people to vote, but I want them to vote freely, without coercion, in a meaningful way.

p.s. almost all naturalized immigrants have to pass a language exam to become citizens (the exception is people who have been here for more than 25 years). That means that almost all immigrants can read english, and for those who cannot, I think that bilingual ballots and clear symbols should be available.

Right, because coercion, voter suppression, and fraud doesn’t happen at the ballot box. !?!??!

You were misinformed. The law changed some time in the late 80s or early 90s – students are automatically considered residents for the basis of any federal election. By the time I was a college student voting, that provision was in full force.

Saying that the only problem in this case was that these guys manipulated the process ignores the fact that the process begs to be manipulated. We don’t leave bank vaults open and then blame the people who walk in and steal money. I doubt Taz leaves her life savings lying out on the sidewalk.

Ballots should be secret, which means that certain measures have to be taken to guarantee the integrity of the process. If this is inconvenient, we should try to make it more convenient, but in the final analysis the secrecy of the ballot trumps all other considerations.

A convenient vote isn’t worth much of local bosses are leaning on you to vote the way they want. It’s exactly the poor and immigrant who will be most easily defrauded of their franchise. If you want to protect them from coercion and suasion, make almost all balloting in person, and impose verification procedures on vote by mail.

There’s no safeguard in the process against fraud though, and for somebody who wants to buy a vote, it’s the only reliable way for them to do so.

Sure, you can pay in person voters, but outside of caucusses secret ballots prevent anybody from knowing if the voter actually did what they were told.

Basically, the most important thing about a ballot, to me, is that it has to be secret. Vote by mail or any other form of balloting is an open invitation to fraud because it is not secret at all.

So what should we do about immigrants? Have translated ballots, use images, and create voting centers close to their homes. But don’t throw the process wide open.