Helping America Not to Vote

The Help America Vote Act (HAVA), the electoral reform bill passed by Congress in 2002, is a mixed blessing. In These Times provides a scorecard of the implementation of various HAVA provisions. One thing they missed in their assessment is  HAVA's basic failure to  address systematic election fraud. What happened in Florida in 2000 was not the simple disfunction of antiquated machines and poor counting techniques. Nor was it  the result of "sloppiness", "mistakes", "incompetence", or "negligence".Rather, it was the purposeful, deliberate conduct of Republicans to steal an election. HAVA begins from the premise that through negligence mistakes were made.  That is bullshit. Republicans intentionally and systematically stole the election. It does not matter what kind of technology was used. HAVA does include some positive gains, but those have suffered from foot dragging and stalled implementation. Go here to see the scorecard of HAVA implementation. GO here for a brief history of Florida 2000. By the way did you know that in many European democracies 18 year olds are automatically registered to vote?