I feel like I'm having political flashbacks.
Voters are so apathetic today that it's hard to get a 40 percent turnout -- and that's with mail-in ballots and voter registration tables in local grocery stores.
I grew up in Arkansas. People took their politics seriously there. At least back then, they did. We actually had a county that regularly had voter turnouts above 100 percent. And the local political boss who ran things in the county didn't seem to be at all embarrassed about it. I'm not making this up.
The local motto was vote early and often. And people did. They just used a different name each time. People took their voting so seriously in that county that some of them kept doing it for years after they died.
I also remember reading about similar shenanigans in Louisiana and in Chicago, back in the days of the first Mayor Daley.
I live in Colorado now. Politics are much tamer here. Or so I thought. Maybe I just haven't been paying attention.
But they're beginning to look a lot more like what went on back in the Arkansas of my youth -- thanks to electronic voting machines and our secretary of state, Mike Coffman.
Coffman has decertified all of the voting machines being used in our state except one. No one seems to know exactly what criteria he used in making this decision, but there have been news stories about him having ties to people who work for the company with the one machine he said is okay. Hmmm.
This is not a small matter. Many of our counties aren't sure how they'll conduct elections this year since many of them own machines Coffman just said they can't use.
Coffman appears to be softening a bit in the face of a growing number of questions about why he did what he did. He doesn't seem to have a good explanation. He even invited Denver to appeal his decision.
There also have been news stories suggesting the Legislature may rewrite the law to take Coffman out of the loop when it comes to deciding which voting machines can be used. And the state Democratic party put out a press release calling on Coffman to resign:
"The public's confidence in the elections process continues to erode under the watch of this Secretary of State whose essential role is to fulfill his responsibilities as the state's chief elections officer," said (State Democratic Chair Pat) Waak. "Coffman has failed miserably in his attempts to instill the confidence and trust the voting public deserves in the elections process. He needs to leave."
I'm just guessing here. But I think Coffman probably won't quit. And it's probably safe to assume the Democrats know that. So, we have a little political posturing going on here. But the fact is something is terribly wrong with the electronic voting mess here in Colorado -- and a lot of other states. And Coffman has nominated himself as the poster child for what's wrong.
Sadly, the old saw about voting early and often isn't needed if we end up with electronic voting machines that aren't protected from being hacked by the people running our elections and that don't produce an auditable paper trail.
The old-time political bosses had to stuff the ballot boxes with enough votes to be sure they had more votes than the people who showed up to kick them out of office. That meant voter turnouts in excess of 100 percent because the votes were counted in front of enough people that stuffing the ballot boxes was important to having enough votes when the votes were counted.
With electronic voting, all you need to do is tell the machine to rig the election. It doesn't matter how many people vote. So, we can leave the dead folks alone. We'll just rig the voting machines to give us the result we want.
Is that what's happening in Colorado? I can't say that it is. But I can't say that it isn't, either. And that puts everything in jeopardy.
We need to fix this mess. Coffman won't resign -- not until later this year, any way. He apparently is planning to run for Congress even though he just got elected secretary of state a year ago. Just long enough to rig the results of his next election?
That's my two cents' worth. What's yours? -- Jerreigh@contemplayshuns.com
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