Given the very significance of personal voting in the U.S. system of democracy, and how difficult it has been for African Americans to have earned the regular legal right to participate regularly in that system, it is very easy to understand the crooked eye currently being given to Prop 39 on this November’s California ballot.
Why? is the central question. Who needs the permission that ballot would give them? Who benefits and who loses in this particular parlay? If Prop 39 passes, California voters would be required in future elections to possess and present a government-issued identification card when they vote in person; and for mail-in voters, they would have to provide the last four digits of a government-issued identification number they used when they registered to vote, however long ago that was.
Prop 39’s passage would also require California election officials to use some form of government data in order to verify the U.S. citizenship of each California voter, and, when possible, to publish annual reports which would show the percentage of voter registrations which were verified for legitimate citizenship in each county, and lastly to require the California State Auditor to conduct regular audits of compliance with these new requirements. The benefit to California of new regulations like Prop 39 is virtually zero. California already has, and can reliably prove, one of the safest systems of voting in the U.S. Prop 39 is costly and completely unnecessary- part of a Trump administration feint-attempt to overly burden the California system to help a Republican takeover. If it all sounds like another Trump hare-brained scheme, then that’s because it really is just that.
It also seems to be a part of a larger Trump administration play to make voting harder, in general, in America. Voting leaves too much open to chance, while the Trump folk regularly look for sure things, or else they simply try to game the system to produce their desired result. Why give losing a chance to win? Already, spokespeople for the Trump administration have repeatedly said, too many people vote in California anyway (what they mean is too many Democrats). Prop 39 intends to alter that.
They argue that over 35 states in the U.S. have already implemented some form of voter identification requirement and that’s the wave of the future. The Trumpsters say that increased voter ID requirements simply represent a common-sense policy forward. They claim that California needs to modernize its election system in order to align itself with the vast majority of democracies that are already in the world. For mostly everybody else, there are effective voter ID laws in place, and it is past time that California catches up with that procedure.
But Proposition 39 will not pass in California this November—nor should it. It will help neither the state nor its citizens. However, it may very well be a tell from the Trump administration that federal troops and/or election supervisors are being sent into California and other large Democratic-run states this November in order to throw the voting process into a mess if (when) the initial returns show a quick Democratic Party surge to the front, ending the careers of many Trump supporters in Congress.
Is federal elected government the real future for this country, or is a set-up for a future coup being done? It’s clear Trump is not interested in playing fair, only in winning, however that happens. Get ready, everybody !! This year’s elections may be a real doozy!
