Sometimes — OK, most of the time — new rules and regulations aimed at putting the brakes on electioneering shenanigans smack of undue limitations on free speech.
Voters must be trusted at least a little bit to be able to sort out the wheat from the chaff when it comes to the politicking aimed at them during campaigns. If all is fair in love and war it is certainly so in politics.
Informed voters have ample opportunities to fact-check what they hear from candidates, and can use their heads and their hearts to suss out whether the people seeking their votes are con artists or people of conviction.
But it has to be said that the overwhelming evidence of Russian government-backed attempts to hack American elections has changed the atmosphere and made calls for new attempts to block such tactics worth at least listening to.
Such interference is certainly not a partisan issue, and that’s likely why only one “no” vote was cast in both houses of the California Legislature against a new law under which journalists, researchers and political campaigns that receive voter data must tell officials if it may have been stolen. …
Click here to read the full article from the Orange County Register
Until California repeals the “motor voter” laws and starts enforcing photo ID of legal citizenship at the polls, the Russians ain’t the biggest problem you face at the polls…
I’ll go one step further, I believe that taxpayers’ votes should count double, as they have more skin in the game than a transient population in an area.