Voting is a Sacred Right and Solemn Responsibility

In recent weeks there have been shocking stories about highly organized efforts to fraudulently register voters. Thousands of duplicate registrations have been reported along with the registrations of dead people, ineligible people, and even nonexistent people. Fraudulent votes have already been cast on behalf of the mentally impaired and the dead. In some states, political leaders have led aggressive efforts to register soon-to-be-released prisoners, while finding technical grounds to disqualify absentee ballots from our personnel in the armed services. These efforts are sinister, often criminal, and those involved should be prosecuted.

This reported fraud being carried out throughout the nation not only demonstrates a contempt for our country and its Constitution, it is an attempt to diminish and even take away the sacred right that you and I have to determine those who will represent us at the local, state and federal levels of government. In a nation of, by and for the people, those who carry out such activities are as much a threat to our nation as any enemy combatant.

Of course we hear in many quarters that all of this activity is simply to ensure that everyone votes. But what is the benefit to society in having everyone vote? In San Francisco, illegal aliens have been given the right to vote in municipal elections. A Boston Alderman has proposed that legal, non-citizens should be permitted to vote in that city’s elections. And some free Western nations actually compel everyone to go to the polls. But our founders did not create an absolute democracy where the emotions and whims of the mob rule. Instead they created a republic where certain things, such as one’s right to life, liberty, and property, and even the right not to vote, can never be taken away by majority vote.

There are many people we encounter every day who have no interest in government, politics, and the domestic and foreign affairs of our country. No doubt many of them are good people who love their families and contribute to their communities. But should they be rounded up and delivered to the polls to make decisions about issues that effect all the rest of us and on which they have little if any interest or knowledge?

No eligible citizen should be denied his or her right to cast a vote. But when illegal aliens who don’t speak English, and who know nothing of our history, Constitution, laws and culture, are encouraged to vote, is our country made better or is it made worse?

At the beginning of our national life, only 20% of adult males cast ballots. No one suggests that we should return to such a limited franchise, but those informed voters did manage to elect such monumental historical figures as Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Adams.

Efforts to ensure that anyone with a driver’s license becomes a registered voter, or to permit phone-in votes as one Colorado organization advocates, cheapen and demean our political process and potentially turn what should be a high privilege and solemn responsibility into a common task.

Those who devote themselves to ensuring that ballot boxes are jam-packed with as many legal, as well as illegal, votes as possible would do our nation a far greater service if they directed their energies to ensuring that our citizens are truly prepared to knowledgeably exercise their responsibility as voters.

As President Kennedy stated: "The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all."