Monday, June 12, 2006

Denver Bureaucratic Incompetence Or Election Year Maleficence?

The Denver Election Commission has filed a police report and launched an internal investigation to figure out what happened to personal information on more than 150,000 voters.

Voter registration information from 1989 to 1998 was in a filing cabinet on microfiche. Early voting signature cards from the November 2005 election are also missing.

Social Security numbers, birth dates, signatures and addresses have disappeared. Officials don't know whether the records were stolen or lost when the Denver Election Commission moved in February. The loss is worrisome because the records could be exploited by identity thieves. -9 News


Voters have been exhorted to take identity-protection measures, but to my knowledge so far nobody has suggested the possibility of outright voter fraud. Considering there is no way to verify that one's vote has been counted, the anonymous ballot encourages and rewards voter fraud. Perhaps our national indifference to the problem indicates just how little we really value one vote.

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