"n the United States, at a time of heightened security and mundane rules that require citizens to show ID to travel and even rent a video, only seventeen states require some form of documentation in order to vote. ‘Why should the important process of voting be the one exception of this rule?’ asked Karen Saranita, a former fraud investigator for a Democratic state senator in California. Americans agree. A Rasmussen Research poll finds that 82 percent of Americans, including 75 percent of Democrats, believe that ‘people should be required to show a driver’s license or some other form of photo ID before they are allowed to vote."

“It was the day of Washington, D.C.’s presidential primary, April 3, 2012. A 22-year-old white man with a beard entered a polling place in the District, carrying a hidden camera. He walked up to the check-in desk and asked a poll workers if an Eric Holder was registered there. He gave U.S. Attorney General Holder’s address, which he had gleaned from public records. The worker began to hand him a ballot, at which point the young man said that he wanted to show his identification. ‘You don’t need it,’ the poll worker replied. ‘It’s all right. As long as you’re in here, you’re on our list, and that’s who you say you are, you’re okay.’”

“Local registration and election boards should be composed of citizen appointees. All such boards should have equal representation from both major political parties and at least one independent or third-party member. We’ve seen over and over, from St. Louis to Palm Beach County, how conflicts of interest are created if election boards are run by officials who have to run for offices themselves—often as partisans. ‘I think you’ll see most of the problems in bad management of elections occur where the top position isn’t nonpartisan and where most of the oversight is by people deeply involved in the political process,’ says Mischelle Townsend, the registrar of voters in Riverside County, California.”

“But few in the media or in urban government seem concerned about the designed sloppiness of our election system. Our current ‘honor’ system in voter registration and voting, and the lax enforcement of voting laws , is analogous to having counterfeit bills circulating and the Treasury Department not wanting to be bothered until the printing press is located.”

“Actual election results in Georgia and Indiana confirm that suppositions about voter ID hurting minority turnout are wrong. In 2008, in the first presidential election after their voter ID laws went into effect, both states saw turnout increase more dramatically in both the presidential preference primaryandthe general election than turnout increased in some stateswithoutthe photo-ID requirement.”

“The NPV plan strikes at the Founders’ view of federalism and a representative republic—one where popular sovereignty is balanced by structural protection for state governments and minority interests. It like would violate the Constitution’s Compact Clause. In an age of perceived political dysfunction, effective policies that already are in place—especially successful policies established by this nation’s Founders, like the Electoral College—should be preserved.”

“There is still time to reduce the chance of another election meltdown, both this year and in future years. But this will not happen unless we acknowledge that the United States has a haphazard, fraud-prone election system befitting an emerging Third World country rather than the world’s leading democracy.”