Up for grabs

There was an article in the Courier News yesterday where Jack Cunningham, our county clerk, admits that it is possible for an illegal alien to register to vote. And there is nothing to stop him at the polls, either.

I blogged about this before (http://alienrants.blogspot.com/2007/12/voting-in-illinois.html) but it is hard for me to fathom the response of an elected official. He has been able to identify the problem, yet he has no intention of making the effort to fix it.

Here are a couple of Jack’s comments:
"We never single out any group. There has to be a presumption that they are citizens unless it's proven otherwise. We, at this level, don't have much control over the issue."

Well, given the policy of making political activists registrars, exactly who is presuming these people are citizens?

"I'm very concerned that everyone who's on our list is legal. I don't think in Kane County it's a particular problem at this point. We have groups that come in and say it is, and we have groups that say it isn't. It's a very difficult issue."

Of course, we don’t know how big the problem is. If you do a little poll watching on the east side of the Fox River, you’re likely to see significant numbers of voters who do not have a rudimentary understanding of English. Are they illegal? Who knows? Surely the county clerk doesn’t know. He admits it.

Meanwhile, the U. S. Supreme Court is deliberating over the Indiana law requiring photo ID at the polling place.

We are so afraid of offending someone or causing a hardship that we simply look the other way. I’ll tell you how to fix the problem, but it will never fly in our kooky society. Voters would be registered by the county clerk who would only accept secure and verifiable ID from the voter. The clerk would then obtain a signature and photo as part of the registration process. Then cards would be issued like an employee ID or a license.

Any fraud by the voter or registrar would result in prison time.

No more Republican Committeemen or La Raza Officers as registrars. No more wiggle room about proving citizenship. No more utility bills for ID. No more automatic voter cards when you get a Driver’s License. That’s how you stop the problem.

But as long as politicians want to make a voter out of anything with a pulse, we will not ascribe the proper value to the right to vote.