Fairness Doctrine

Today is the day for humility, and with humility, eternal malevolence vanishes.

On this day in 1988, Monty Python founding member Graham Chapman died of cancer in England, age 48.  Impermanence is swift.  Across the Atlantic, on that same day that Chapman died, actors Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson gave birth to a daughter, the actress Dakota Johnson.  Today's her birthday.  

Today I completed my application for a Georgia absentee ballot for the upcoming election.  I was eligible to vote by mail due to my age (over 65).  It was my first such application under Georgia's new voting rules and I have to admit that the process was not all that difficult (at least for me).  It was easy to find the Application Form on the Georgia Secretary of State's website. It was not too difficult to fill out the form, and it only requested my name, address, and Georgia driver's license number (there were other forms of identification allowable if one did not have a driver's license).

Technically, the process required that I print the application, sign it in ink, and then email a scan to the County registration office.  If one didn't have the ability to scan a signed document, one could mail it in or deliver it in person.

All in all, not all that difficult, but I can see someone in poverty challenged by lack of on-line access, the license requirement, yhe ability to print the application, and to email the scanned form to the registrar.  But again, there were analog equivalents to all these tasks (e.g., one could pick up an application form at the County registrar).

I think people voting in person will face greater challenges due to longer lines, fewer days of advanced voting, and less polling places.  And the infamous ban barring people from providing food or water to voters waiting on the long lines.

But what has me most concerned are the new avenues for partisan interference in the election created by the new law.  In Georgia, the Election Board, typically bipartisan, oversees vote counting and voter eligibility and is chaired by the Secretary of State, an elected official.  But the new law strips the Secretary of State of the chairmanship and allows the Republican-controlled state legislature to appoint a person to take control and chair the Board. The legislature can also appoint two of the five voting members to the Board, thus guaranteeing a partisan majority, and denies the Secretary of State any vote on the Board.

Sound fair?  I don't think so either.