The Schizophrenic Season

You know, this has been a horrible campaign season as far as I am concerned. The nastiness is at an all time high. But worse, it is also enough to give you a headache. On the one hand, you have the media cheerleading for the coming Worst Electoral Defeat In Recorded History Ever™. This is meme is out there every, single day all over the media. Then there are the dire warnings, coming from the Democrats and the media of how if the aforementioned meme does not come to pass it will be because somehow, somewhere the Republicans had something to do with it. In other words they set up the expectation for victory and the rationale for the blizzard of lawsuits and challenges if the predictions turn out to be wrong.

Indiana will have the country's strictest voter identification law in effect on Election Day. The 2005 picture ID law, however, puts it among a dozen states that have tightened requirements lately that voters display some form of identification at the polls. The laws have spawned partisan warring, lawsuits and confusion that election experts predict could influence the outcome of some close elections.

In the Washington area, Virginia requires all voters to show identification, although it does not need to have a picture. Maryland and the District require first-time voters who registered by mail to bring identification, such as a driver's license or utility bill, to the polls.

While the local laws have not been challenged, new voter ID laws nationally are the most widespread, and most bitterly disputed, of several types of voting procedures that states have adopted after the chaotic 2000 presidential election. The procedures include statewide electronic databases of registered voters, which critics allege have in a few states improperly knocked out eligible people. In another procedure, Ohio and Florida — battleground states that have produced recent contested elections — have placed tighter reins on groups that work to register new voters.

Such rules, together with updated voting-machine technology, were touted as means to modernize and bolster public confidence in the election system. They have quickly led to new struggles over voting rights. Republicans and their allies assert that the identification requirements and other rules will lessen voting fraud. Democrats and their supporters contend the changes are ploys to suppress voting among poor, elderly, minority and disabled citizens, who are prone to support Democratic candidates.

"We believe photo ID is the kind of confidence-building measure that is warranted in light of past fraud," said Mark "Thor" Hearne, the chief election lawyer for the 2004 Bush campaign and now counsel to the American Center for Voting Rights, a conservative advocacy group. He predicted the identification laws will prompt higher turnout.

Mary G. Wilson, national president of the League of Women Voters, said identification laws, particularly ones requiring photo IDs, are "odious" and added: "There is very little evidence there's been any kind of voting by people who are ineligible to vote. We view this as basically another unnecessary hurdle voters are being put through."

(I've made my position on this clear all along. Being against voter ID is being pro-fraud. Period. All the yapping is making excuses to justify the continuance of fraud.)

Usually, politicians try to minimize expectations before an election. The Dems appear to be maximizing expectations, both of victory and of being able to scream if they don't win. I expect there will be some ugliness and many billable hours for lawyers after this election. Just guessing.