"Sometimes that desire to expand voting opportunities takes on unrealistic qualities. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has placed a measure on the November 2004 ballot that would allow noncitizens to vote in school board elections. ‘Candidates who run for school board ought to have to campaign in immigrant communities that are filling the public schools with kids,’ says Supervisor Matt Gonzales, the proposal’s chief sponsor. But city attorney Louise Renne, a Democrat, is adamant that state law probably bars noncitizens from voting on anything until they actually become citizens. ‘What next? Osama bin Laden voting?’ she asks."

“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.”