The Weekly Screed (#640)

Answering America’s 
desperate need for voter fraud
by David Benjamin

MADISON, Wis. — One of the dilemmas of 21st-century democracy is the shocking and unrelieved competence of pollworkers on Election Day all across America. Every time you vote nowadays, the crisis is nakedly clear.

Almost all the pollworkers are golden-agers — mature, honest senior citizens, educated in a bygone era when Civics was still a 9th-grade requirement, each one passionate about the integrity of the polls. They look each supplicant up and down with a gimlet gaze. They check and cross-check each list, to make sure the voter is registered at his or her correct address and voting in the right precinct. They cross off each name in a broad swath of indelible black ink and pass the voter on to another pollworker who adds one more suspicious squint to the inspection. Even then, before the voter can snatch up the precious ballot and flee into the booth, he or she faces added scrutiny from a gauntlet of paranoid reinforcements, teams of “poll-watchers” — three or more in a typical platoon — sent over by the Republicans, the Democrats, the Tea Party, the union bosses, the Koch brothers, the John Birch Society. They peruse the voter coldly, all of them trained to utter a hair-trigger “challenge” if they sniff even the faintest whiff of “voter fraud.”

Which has disappeared, of course, largely because today’s pollworkers are so well-trained, anal retentive and altogether impenetrable. This wasn’t always so. In the halcyon days of “machine politics,” an enterprising ward-heeler could usher a herd of well-bribed bums, well-oiled drunks and wretched refuse through a dozen polling places, slip a sawbuck to the local registrar and record 20 votes for George O’Brien — over and over — on behalf of the denizens of the nearest graveyard.

Our last remnant of that regime of friendly, collaborative voter fraud is its place in the mythology of the GOP. Republican chiefs like Governors Rick Scott of Florida and Rick Perry of Texas know that individual “voter fraud” has been erased by fair election laws and, especially, by all those hyper-vigilant coots who staff the card tables and guard the rolls on Election Day.

But Scott, Perry and the GOP dare not admit the eradication of “voter fraud.” To do so would be to welcome into America’s body-politic wave upon wave of the sort of black, brown, Asian, youthful, poor, hungry, immigrant and previously marginalized voters who tend to swing elections away from the country-club and corporate elites who deem themselves traditionally entitled to be in charge, and to remain in charge (regardless of elections), if only for the sake of those black, brown, Asian, youthful, poor, hungry, immigrant and previously marginalized upstarts who really don’t understand what’s good for them.

“We need, obviously, a new business model for voter fraud!” said my friend Smedley, one of America’s foremost Soulless Functionaries. A genius in his field Smedley advises government and corporations on how to reduce living, breathing human beings — mothers, dads, small children —into meaningless and expungable entries on ledger pages, spreadsheets and computer files.

“The problem with voter fraud is that there is no problem,” said Smedley. “When the Indiana Supreme Court ruled — presciently — in favor of photo ID for voters, they admitted that there was no evidence whatsoever of voter fraud in Indiana. The majority flatly conceded that they favor shrinking the electorate through photo ID because they’re Republicans and they want their team to win.”

This sort of obvious rigging — even by distinguished jurists — can’t last, said Smedley. “By and by, voters will smell a rat. They might even recognize such decisions — as well as the elimination of same-day registration, cutbacks in early voting and late voting hours, and other tricks to reduce turnout — as ‘voter fraud.’”

Smedley admitted that the GOP might not survive without constantly raising the dire specter of voter fraud. “So, since we need it but don’t have it,” he said, “we have to create it. On a huge scale. Round up vast numbers of illegal aliens, parolees, underage voters, boozers, junkies and other riffraff, and flood the polls with these fakers. We need to install, blackmail and corrupt election officials. Bribe them exorbitantly with untraceable laundered money funneled through Planned Parenthood, trade unions, the Sierra Club, trial lawyers, gay and Lesbian groups, the NAACP, and unwitting Democratic Party storefronts.”

I suggested that, despite these efforts, America’s loyal legions of scrupulous pollworkers, checking the lists, could weed out and reject most phony voters.

“You mean,” said Smedley, smirking, “all those well-meaning but unqualified volunteers? All those senile bunglers and nursing-home convicts? Gone. We’ll fire every last geezer and plant our own ‘professionals’ — administrative interns hand-picked from politically active organizations on nearby college campuses.”

“You mean?” I said.

“Yes,” replied Smedley. “Campus Republicans! Young Americans for Freedom! Clones of Karl Rove, Roger Ailes and Dick Cheney.”

“But,” I said, looking for a silver lining in this electoral black cloud, “isn’t this a rather costly notion? Won’t you need to raise millions — perhaps billions — of dollars in shady under-the-table, probably illegal funds? Won’t you need a national network of narcissist nabobs and secretive, unethical corporations with immense overseas slush funds? Won’t you need an army of naïve, nihilist zealots — enabled by thousands of heartless, soulless functionaries like yourself — everyone of you willing to sell out your immortal soul for short-term electoral gain and the death of one-person, one-vote American democracy? Won’t you have to soil forever the legacy of the party of Abraham Lincoln —  all for the sake of keeping black people and immigrant dreamers from exercising their Constitutional rights?”

Smedley cocked his head curiously to one side, polished the ‘Rand Paul 2016’ button on his lapel and replied, “OK. So, what’s your point?”