OK, I just don’t get it.

As you may know here in Washington we had an election around the same time everyone else did last November. Trouble is, that our Governor’s race was too close and was decided by a hand recount under fairly suspicious circumstances, and was finally decided by a very narrow margin. An election contest lawsuit for mistakes and negligence is being raised now, and will actually go to trial next month.

So one of the issues raised by commentators and politicians was the way we here in Washington register to vote and cast our ballots.

Here, you are not required to show proof of citizenship to register to vote, you just need ID. You would think this is sufficient, but we also allow our resident non citizens to get Drivers Licenses. What is really neat, is the motor-voter program. This is a handy way to discourage and combat voter apathy by having people register to vote when they go to the DMV and renew their licenses or register cars. So naturally, the non citizens are asked to register to vote also. But please don’t worry, we have a safe guard in place to prevent non citizens from registering: A nifty little check box that each person must check Asking if you are a citizen of the US and the stern warning that if you say no, you cannot register.

All that is fine I suppose, but what I don’t get is how I can arrive at the polling station and vote without showing my ID. I mean what is to stop me from voting several times under different names? What stops me from going to a different polling station and reading off a friends name? When these issues were raised, our legislature took immediate action…on a whole load of crap that won’t fix anything, and they studiously avoided an ID requirement.