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Show Wisconsin and Minnesota shows that this abuse would not occur. But Minnesota and Wisconsin, two rural northern states with good overall voting records, are not Chicago, New York and Boston big cities with all too familiar political machines. mach-ines. Opposition to the proposal is not restricted to any one faction. Thirty of the 50 Secretaries of State in America, Including Utah's David S. Monson, have adamantly ada-mantly opposed relaxing voter registration require -m ents. Chicago election officials (all Democrats) recently told a Congressional committee that if adopted, this law would put Chicago "back into the dark ages" as far as honest elections are concerned. Even the U. S. Justice Department De-partment criticized the plan, the head of the Election Unit of the Criminal Division saying, say-ing, "I oppose the concept embodied in H. R. 5400 as a dangerous relaxation of what precious few safeguards presently exist against abuse of the franchise." I have made my opposition opposi-tion official in the form of a letter to House Speaker Thomas O'Neill calling for an investigation of the bill's fraud potential. Our present voter registration regis-tration system allows officials of-ficials to effectively screen voters and purge the rolls of non-existent ones before the fraud can occur. CONGRESSIONAL REPORT INSTANT VOTER FRAUD BY DM MARRIOTT alties for voting fraud. Can you imagine a judge or jury sending someone to jail for five years for improper voting, vot-ing, especially when many others did the samethingbut didn't get caught? Many claim the success of same -day registration in One of the three election elec-tion reform proposals thrust upon Congress by the Carter Car-ter Adm inlstration is instant voter registration. It is embodied in H. R. 5400, the Universal Voter Registration Regis-tration Act of 1977. Along with public financing of Congressional Con-gressional campaigns and the recently approved Hatch Act R evisions , instant registra -tion will cost millions of tax dollars and open the door to wholesale fraud in our elections, elec-tions, disrupting rather than reforming the system. These proposals are billed bil-led as a simplification of the election process to increase public participation. That's a worthy cause and I encourage en-courage the concept, but going go-ing about it. in this manner would in fact accomplish the opposite more control by big labor and special interest groups and less by individuals. indivi-duals. The way instant registration registra-tion works is that anyone with some form of identification can show up at the voting booth on election day and cast a ballot. It doesn't take m uch imagination to see the possibilities. pos-sibilities. Large numbers of people could be brought into a precinct or community, claim it is their intent to live there permanently, then cast enough votes to impose an unwanted bond issue on local voters, or dilute the im -pact of a local minority voting vot-ing bloc. The easy availability of false ID cards is another problem. Therefore simply requiring a form of identification is no deterrent at all. It would be virtually virtual-ly impossible to check out every suspicious Individual or group. Even if it could be done, this bill mandates unreal-istically unreal-istically harsh criminal pen - time to put on the dog, and show our visitors a good time." It might make them want to come back when business busi-ness is not so booming! |