Not for the individual voter, no. But for the political organizers and campaigners, it certainly does. If, say, the Illinois Republican Party wanted to ship a few dozen busloads of solidly Republican Hoosiers over the state line to nab some extra electoral votes in a presidential election this would make such chicanery harder to weed out. Or taking voters fom district to district to vote multiple times. Or shift voters whose residency is in an uncontested Congressional district to a place where the race is closer and they could be of more use to the party. Heck, here’s an even worse scenario - if the local elections commissioner is “extra friendly” to one party or another, this makes it easier for him (or her) to allow/disallow suspect votes.
This is an invitation for voter fraud, and whether or not it was prevalent before the invitation does not change the fact that it’s an invitation.
The problem with your line of theory is that you are posing organized voter fraud as the biggest threat. But such organized fraud would be nearly impossible to keep a secret. If any such fraud had occured in the past couple elections, we would have heard of it by now and charges would have been filed. Have we heard of any cases? Are there any charges? From what I’ve seen, the answer is no. The cases we have heard of involve individuals taking it upon themselves to perpetuate the fraud.
Representatives from each party would be in attendance (As is the case for every state that allows on-site registration that I know of) which would reduce the possibility for this kind of fraud. And if such fraud were to occur, you can bet dollars to donuts that it would see the full light of a court house. So that built in protection deflects that concern.
I thought you were talking about more recent instances. The 1970s are, like, forever ago. I can’t see anybody getting away with using the “dead vote” nowadays. Too easy to catch.
Voter fraud could be overcome very easily. The technology is there to track fingerprints. Every voter, upon registration, will have to provide a fingerprint which is stored with the voter record.
Each polling place would have a fingerprint scanner. All the voter has to do is show up at the polls and place their finger in the scanner. Voila.
Yes, it will cost some $$ to do it. Is it worth it? I think so.
