The penalty for the disenfranchisement of a legal voter should be banishment from politics.

[stevenleser]

That thought just came to me so I am writing it down and asking my fellow DUers what you think.

Banishment to me means, you lose your own right to vote and you cannot hold political office ever again.

That should be the punishment for the disenfranchisement of someone who should be allowed to vote. Everyone who was involved in that decision should suffer that fate.

The point being that if you are going to invalidate someone's voter registration, you better be 100% sure.

Let's stop this nonsense I say.

[SoutherDem]

1. I agree and go one step further

If it does sway an election overturn the results.

[TheKentuckian]

2. There has to be monetary cost to the state and probably prison time as well.

You have to introduce more massive risk than individual banishment, there has to be a cost to the system that permits such as well.

[sinkingfeeling]

3. For whom? The clerk that typed the list for a voter purge? The elections

supervisor? The guy that used the data base? I know you mean the governor or political consultant, but how will you locate the exact person that disenfranchised a voter?

[stevenleser]

6. All involved with the decision in any way. People should fear being associated with it.

I'm serious. The right to vote should be treated as sacrosanct.

[sinkingfeeling]

7. So people merely doing their jobs of running searches through databases,

typing up lists, etc. should all be banished from the realm?

[stevenleser]

11. Short answer - Yes. Longer answer...

The law I have in mind would clearly outline the rules and responsibilities of all those involved in removing someone from the rolls and regular communications would go out from the US Department of Justice to all state elections employees reinforcing the point.

Reality is, the Bush administration performed a 5 year long study with the goal of proving that Democrats engage in voter fraud and they failed. They managed to indict less than 150 people in 5 years and tried to make the whole thing quietly go away.

States should not be engaging in wiping people from the rolls outside of the normal process where if you havent voted for X amount of years. It just should not be happening.

[ashling]

4. You are henceforth BANISH-ED!

And forthwith shall be an OUTLAW and no longer under the protection of the laws

Forever to be EXILED from politics and it systems

Philip Nolan never had it so good. (The Man Without a Country, Edward Everett Hale)

[JoePhilly]

5. Agree.

[badtoworse]

8. What should be the penalty for registering someone who is not legally eligible to vote?

Same deal?

[stevenleser]

9. To knowingly do so is already a felony. But there are laws that complicate that. See my article:

As I noted here: http://www.opednews.com/articles/McCain-and-Republican-Lies-by-Steven-Leser-081019-167.html

"Every election year, many organizations of which Acorn is only one, hire people to register voters. Those hired are paid by the amount of applications they are able to have completed by new voters. Finding people who are not registered is difficult work and some of the hired want to be paid for not working so they forge applications and turn them in. By law in almost every state, organizations such as Acorn MUST submit every application they receive from their workers. The reasons for this are obvious. If your organization has a political bent, you could decide to submit only those from voters who intend to register as a member of the party of your preference. The law is designed to prevent this from happening.

Thus, when Acorn received back registration forms that were suspect, they had to submit them. That is the end of that story... except for a few things. In every case in counties where Acorn was having registration efforts, Acorn told election officials which batch of voter registrations it suspected of being fraudulent..."

[badtoworse]

10. The "knowingly" standard was absent in the OP.

If it had been included, I would have been OK with the idea. Applying the OP's penalty in cases of honest mistakes is ridiculous.

[stevenleser]

12. It's not ridiculous. You should not be purging people from the rolls at all.

See my #11 above.

[badtoworse]

13. So you don't believe in having standards as to who is eligible to vote?

[stevenleser]

14. Sure I do. And I believe in enforcing them at registration time

Which is done anyway.

I do not believe in coming back after the fact when an election is coming and purging people who previously passed scrutiny in the hopes of finding a reason to disenfranchise them.

[badtoworse]

15. How do you stop dead people from voting? Or people who have moved?

Or convicted felons? Just because you were once eligible to vote in a particular stae or voting district does not mean you will always be eligible to do so. I thought that was so obvious it didn't need to be pointed out.

[stevenleser]

16. The answer is, it doesn't happen. And we know that

Because of the Bush administrations investigation.

It doesn't happen. People are just not doing these things. After an extensive 5 year investigation, they found less than 150 instances of voter fraud over 5 years nationwide.

[badtoworse]

17. Maybe so, but that was in an era when eligibility could be checked

your approach would change that significantly and be an open invitation for large scale fraud.. Sorry, the idea stinks.