Reply #40: Are you saying that you expect me as a pollworker to...

[demodonkey]

sight-ID every voter? Yikes, that's a helluva responsibility.

What about people who have just moved in?

What about people who only vote once every four years? (Or worse, some only vote about once every eight years!)

We have about 1200 voters in my poll, mostly from one large housing development. (Used to be a rural poll with about 300 voters, but a big money-bags GOP developer came in during the early 90's and raped the farm next to us to the tune of over 500 houses!) That said, I think that I know at least 60% of my voters by sight, but there is a lot of turnover (these are very mobile "yuppie" types, moving in and out to find work with the most $$).

I'm not crazy about "sein papieren, bitte!" use of ID, but as a pollworker I don't think I can adequately be the first and last defense against fraudulent use of somebody's right to vote either by sight-ID of voters or by signature matching.

How would you feel if you came in to vote, and I told you that you couldn't because you already HAD voted that day? (meaning somebody already presented themself as YOU, and we accidentally let them vote using your name?) Or worse, what if you came in to vote and I didn't recognize you (or couldn't read your signature) and I told you to forget it and go away?

As I said before on this thread, I don't have an absolute answer but we need to figure SOMETHING out that will not violate anybody's privacy and civil liberties too much, but will allow some sort of meaningful ID-checking for voters. The alternative is just let anybody walk in the door, say a name, and vote. And that could be the oldest "voter fraud" (yes, Faye, voter fraud, lol!) in the books. Remember the old saying "vote early and vote often"? That's how it happened, and it certainly could happen again.