When we started voting in elections back in the mid-70s in Idaho, the procedure was that we'd walk into the polling place, announce our names, receive a ballot, vote, and drop the ballot into a box, at which point one of the poll workers would announce that we - by name - had voted. It was a simple process, and there wasn't a lot of special security attached to it, but it seemed to work. Hardly ever did you see a report of anyone casting a ballot who shouldn't have done.
In that, that's close to how it's still done, and it still works. In some places in recent years you're required to show some form of identification, but that's usually not too difficult a task - most of us have some sort of identifying paperwork.
The new Federal Election Integrity Act, on the other hand, is another in the long line of federal measures in recent years which is closer to the opposite of what its name portends, because elections of integrity are in no way being addressed and are actually being attacked. The more serious threats to election integrity involve such concerns as hackable voting machines and efforts to suppress voting; this bill does nothing to help in that area. On the other hand, this bill does its bit to suppress voting, by imposing ever more intensive document requirements ("are your papers in order?") to cast a vote. The effect is going to be a discouraging of people to vote.
It will have special impact on mail-voting places like Oregon, where voters will have to send copies of documents like birth certificates through the mail to cast a vote. (more…)
Her path as an activist conservative Christian then took an abruptly different direction. It might have led to a comfortable job lobbying or at a D.C. think tank. Instead, she visited places like the child sex depth of the red light district in Mumbai (Bombay) and the sex clubs of Tokyo.