Editorials

It beatsthrowing beans into a hat

It’s time.

In roughly 48 hours, those of us who have yet to cast our ballots will participate in the ritual that defines America’s identity.

Election Day will take hold, and millions of citizens will take advantage of their freedom of choice.

But before any writing utensils come into contact with any official election paperwork, the voter will need to overcome one of the greatest obstacles facing modern democracy — bureaucracy.

The wait will be endless. The lines will be unfathomable. It’s going to seem like the worst day at any DMV, multiplied by a thousand. It’s going to make a busy day at Disneyland look like a breezy afternoon in a secluded park.

It’s going to be stressful. No matter the circumstance, the math equation “Irritation equals the number of people plus the length of the line, multiplied by the duration of the wait” always wins out.

Of course, there isn’t a single good reason for any eligible citizen not to vote, but voter apathy became a serious problem in this country, mainly because people didn’t want to deal with the hassle.

It shouldn’t be much of a problem getting people to the polls this time around. Few elections have elicited such passionate reactions. But the hassle is still an issue.

In today’s information age, people are used to voicing their opinions immediately. The Internet has allowed everyone to access every issue practically instantaneously and comment just seconds later. The idea of waiting in line seems to bother people much more than it should.

However, things used to be so much worse.

Of course, there are the thousands of horror stories that accompany previous voting laws. It seems unfathomable that voting requirements used to include race and gender designations, but it’s true.

In addition, there are dozens of bizarre voting practices that have thankfully been eradicated.

Harvard history professor Jill Lepore penned a remarkable article for the Oct. 13 edition of the New Yorker titled “Rock, Paper, Scissors.” Throughout her piece, she points out how the American election process has evolved since the days of our Founding Fathers and some of the downright bizarre voting practices that used to be considered commonplace.

For example, she opens her essay with the tale of a Baltimore merchant named George Kyle. As he went to cast his ballot in the election of 1859, he and his brother were assaulted by a group of thugs who obviously disagreed with their politics. See, during this era, voters were forced to clip their ballots out of the local newspaper and bring it filled out to a polling station, where they handed it over to an election judge.

This dangerous practice led to the deaths of 89 voters during Election Day riots in the 19th century. Just before the turn of the 20th century, it was considered a radical idea to have the government provide the ballot.

Even before the days of the paper ballot, Colonial America found ways to vote. Besides the traditional hand-raising or “yea/nay” vocalization, Lepore wrote that it was common to see Pennsylvanians toss beans into a hat.

Strangely enough, the concept of a private ballot — which is considered a pillar of the modern voting process — was originally derided as “cowardly, underhanded and despicable.”

The current voting system needed many tweaks before it could reach legitimacy. Lepore discusses a tactic known as the Tasmanian Dodge, where you “get your hands on a blank ballot, fill it out, and pay someone to cast it while smuggling out another blank,” allowing the devious to vote as many times as they like. This is why all ballots are numbered — which seems like common sense, in hindsight.

Of course, the voting system of today isn’t perfect — remember the hanging chad fiasco in 2000? — but it has come a long way since throwing beans into a hat or risking personal injury on our way to the polls.

Sharing the same battles

The check will soon be in the mail. That was the message from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Mexican Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa during a meeting last week in Puerto Vallarta.

The Mexican government is awaiting delivery of a $400 million U.S. aid package to help Mexican officials fight the drug cartels. Already, Mexican President Felipe Calderon has dispatched more than 20,000 soldiers and federal police officers to various parts of Mexico to battle drug gangs. The cartels have fought back by targeting law enforcement officials.

The aid package is called the Merida Initiative, and it was approved by Congress in June. But the check has not been cut, and it won’t be until the Bush administration verifies to Congress that Mexico is complying with human rights requirements. Rice told Espinosa that the verification process should be completed soon, and that help was on the way.

We certainly hope so. But it can’t come soon enough for our long-suffering neighbors in Tijuana, including the grief-stricken family of the toddler who was shot and killed last Thursday. The boy and his father were driving near the site of another shooting earlier in the week, and they were caught in a crossfire between police and members of a drug gang. Rival gangs in Tijuana have killed nearly 150 people in just the last month.

It merits repeating that this is not Mexico’s problem alone. The United States is impacted in every way imaginable. Americans consume the drugs, and the cartels use the profits from those sales to buy the guns that kill not just one another but also innocent little boys who are in the wrong place.

Now, we’re going to spend more money as a country to help the Mexican government buy more guns to combat the cartels we’ve armed. And we’re doing all this because we don’t have a choice. If we do nothing and the cartels win, there will be more drugs, more violence, and more turmoil at our back door. American tourists will stay out of Tijuana, and the residents of Tijuana will stay out of San Diego. Businesses on both sides of the border will take a hit. And, one of the most vibrant and dynamic border regions in the world will continue to suffer.

Like it or not, Americans are already in this battle. Now we have to do everything we can to win.

Reprinted from fhe San Diego Union-Tribune. Distributed by Creators Syndicate, Inc.