The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current, November 25, 2018, Image 18

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The times., November 25, 2018, Image 18

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Newspaper Page TextOPINION ®he £ntics gainesvilletimes.com Sunday, November 25, 2018 Shannon Casas Editor in Chief | 770-718-3417 | scasas@gainesvilletimes.com Submit a letter: letters@gainesvilletimes.com The First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. "Wow, the General Assembly sure got a lot accomplished in a very short time!" "I guess they didn't have time for politics to mess things up." JIM POWELL I For The Times EDITORIAL Time to clarify how voting process works The 2018 Georgia election season, which continues Monday when early voting begins for statewide runoffs for Secretary of State and a seat on the Public Service Commission, has had more twists and turns than Ga. 60 north of Dahlonega. While the governor’s race is finally, thankfully, over, it and other competitive campaigns have spawned the threat of litigation that will challenge how the state conducts elections in the future if promised lawsuits come to fruition. At the heart of these potential chal lenges is a philosophical divide as deep as any other issue separating the Democratic and Republican par ties — how to define what constitutes a legitimate voter and what rules should govern exercising the right to vote. To listen to the great hue and cry from Democrats, their candi date only lost her bid for governor because voting rolls were manipu lated by Republicans to prevent voters from supporting her. Fueled in part by elections determined by razor-thin margins in many states, similar complaints are being made across the nation. The issue at this point isn’t the security of the elections, which was much discussed prior to the vot ing when the fear of computerized hacking was atop the worry list, but rather the composition of qualified voter lists and the discretion granted election officials in deciding who can cast ballots. On one far side of the political spectrum are those who think the polls should be open to just about anyone, regardless of the niceties and requirements of voter registra tion laws. They oppose the idea of requiring identification for voters to vote, oppose the concept of purging from the voter rolls those who go years without voting, oppose the idea that voter registration rules and reg ulations should dictate which votes are counted. On the other end of the political fence are those who believe only those who meet the requirements set by the state should have their bal lots counted, that there need to be precise rules about who is and who isn’t qualified to cast a ballot, that asking voters for a state-issued ID is not unreasonable when conducting elections. The gap between the two extremes is huge, and at this point litigation seems inevitable. Legislation to eliminate purging voters who haven’t voted in recent elections already has been introduced in the state House, and more legislative changes to elec tion laws are likely. While supporters of Stacey Abrams want to lay blame for the election outcome on Brian Kemp and his refusal to step aside as secretary of state to run for governor, the truth is the election laws with which they have such problems predate any campaign by Kemp for governor. The law requiring purging of names from voting rolls for people who have not recently voted, for example, has been in place since 1997 and was approved when a Dem ocrat, Zell Miller, was governor of the state. Under that law, it takes six years to remove someone from the voter rolls who doesn’t respond to a mailed notice asking for verification of voter information. In the aftermath of the governor’s race, Abrams and others who ended up losing close elections freely used words like corruption and malfea sance to describe the state’s electoral system, accusations they almost certainly would not have made had they won. It is important to note that in Geor gia, each individual county is respon sible for staging elections. They do so under the umbrella supervision of the Secretary of State’s office, but each county has its own elections organization complete with local oversight. To spin conspiracies of a statewide effort to work against certain candidates is to ignore the realities of the thousands of people involved in running elections across the state. The rules of use for provisional and absentee ballots, the focal point of so much attention this year, are always part of elections. The micro scopic attention they received this year was the result of the closeness of the votes in many elections. It isn’t hard to make the argument that better technology could be used in conducting elections. The issue in that regard often comes down to money; how much will the state and local governments spend to be on the cutting edge of election technology? One area demanding to be addressed is better security of exist ing voter data. That digital security lapses have made voter information accessible that should not have been is inexcusable, as has been the state’s cavalier attitude toward solving such problems when they are discovered. Securing voter data needs to be a top priority for whomever is elected to replace Kemp as secretary of state in next month’s runoff. But despite all the talk about vot ing systems and better communica tions through technology and what is and isn’t possible with a big enough checkbook, there is still a basic philosophical issue to resolve: Is it an abuse of government power to require minimal standards of reg istration compliance by voters, or should the assumption be that every one is eligible to vote until someone proves they are not? That is the battle to be fought in the courts, and under the Gold Dome of the state Capitol. There is also a racial component to the complaints about handling of elections. This is the South, where Jim Crow policies written to prevent blacks from voting are unfortunately still part of our electoral past, so that any controversy over balloting slides easily into an allegation of racial impropriety. It wasn’t that long ago that Georgia was infamous for having ballots cast in the names of dead people. Regis trations standards and purging of vot ing lists were efforts to stop abuses like that from happening again. At a time when we are willing provide proof of identification to use a credit card, write a check or purchase an adult beverage, we do not think it is unreasonable to ask voters to prove their identity in order to vote. We do not think it is unreasonable to require voters to be American citizens. We do not think it is unreasonable to have in place some methodology to periodically purge voting rolls, if for no other rea son than to eliminate the graveyard votes of yesteryear. There likely are legislative tweaks that can improve the system, but we don’t think the process benefits from allowing anybody who shows up on Election Day to cast a ballot then try ing to decide later what’s legitimate and what’s not. Ours is a constitutional Repub lic, not a pure democracy where every hand raised in the crowd gets counted. We are a nation of laws — and some of those laws have to gov ern the voting process. At the same time, no legitimate potential voter should ever feel dis enfranchised by the system, as some obviously did this year. If changes can be made to state law to alleviate those concerns, without opening the doors to polling place chaos, then those changes are worthy of serious debate and discussion. Trump has odd definition of ‘America First’ America First! — President Donald Trump, Nov. 20 That’s how the president’s official statement giving the crown prince of Saudi Arabia a pass for authorizing the gruesome murder of jour nalist Jamal Khashoggi begins. The president goes on — with even more exclamation points. The very next sentence declares, “The world is a very dangerous place!” And so it is. This was the argument made by the original 1930s JONAH GOLDBERG isolationist movement, goldbergcolumn@ a bipartisan campaign gmail.com against getting entangled, again, in Europe’s wars. World War I, a horrible and stupid war, had disil lusioned a generation of thinkers on the right and the left about both war itself and the high-flown rhetoric (“the war to end all wars,” “the war to make democracy safe,” etc.) used to justify it. The isolationist idea, which came to be known as America First, has roots going back to Wash ington’s farewell address and his call to avoid entangling alliances. It was grounded in the idea that America was an exceptional place that had turned its back on the bel licosity and ancient hatreds of the Old World. A “shining city upon a hill” should not descend into the muck of the world beyond its shores. As President Hoover put it, “It was a belief that somewhere, somehow, there must be an abiding place for law and a sanctuary for civilization.” And that place would be America. Or, as Norman Thomas — head of the American Socialist Party and a founder of the America First Committee — argued, America needed to lead by example because “America lacked the wisdom and the power to play God to the world.” The America First movement, and isolation ism generally, got uglier as the imperative to fight the Nazis grew more obvious for most Americans, but not those whose isolationism derived less from a lofty principle and more from a bias for the German cause. By the eve of World War II, isolationism had become a dirty word, and after Pearl Harbor and — later — after the Holocaust, a filthy one. President Trump adopted “America First” when a reporter used the term in an interview. Clearly ignorant of the historical baggage the label carried, he made it his own. Some of his advisers, clearly aware of the same baggage, encouraged him to do so anyway. I am no fan of the original America First Com mittee or the broader isolationist movement it represented, even if I am often compelled to defend it against the wild distortions one often reads in the popular accounts. Nonetheless, I find it remarkable how Trump has managed to debase the term America First. President Trump’s statement is a mockery of the best sentiments of America First. His argument for why we should turn a blind eye to the Khashoggi murder, even as the Saudi regime plans to execute the men who carried out the crown prince’s orders, is that we are too entangled in our alliance with Saudi Arabia to care. They are a “great ally” because they have “agreed to spend and invest $450 billion in the United States.” He even goes on to list the defense contractors who benefit from Saudi largesse. Nowhere in Trump’s statement does he offer any meaningful condemnation of Saudi behavior or suggest that there is a limit to the portion of the American soul Saudi petrodollars can buy. His defenders praise the president’s “frank ness,” which is fine. But frankness means telling the truth, and that means the truth is that the president frankly doesn’t care much about any thing but the Saudis’ wallet and their praise for him. A statement condemning their behavior could have been frank, too. Ronald Reagan often modeled such frankness. As Sen. Rand Paul, a man largely in the tradi tion of the original America First, put it, “I’m pretty sure this statement is Saudi Arabia First, not America First.” It’s fine to defend America’s economic inter ests, but it’s ugly to suggest that American inter ests begin and end with arms sales and military alliances. America has an interest in standing up for more than a balance sheet. Progressive historian Charles Beard, an America Firster, argued that the U.S. government must “surrender forever the imbecilic belief that it was her duty to defend every dollar invested everywhere and every acquisitive merchant seeking his private inter ests everywhere.” That was America First. This is something different. Jonah Goldberg is an editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Nowhere in Trump's statement does he offer any meaningful condemnation of Saudi behavior... (the (Times Founded Jan. 26,1947 345 Green St., Gainesville, GA 30501 gainesvilletimes.com EDITORIAL BOARD General Manager Norman Baggs Editor in Chief Shannon Casas To submit letters: Send by email to letters@ gainesvilletimes.com or use the contact form at gainesvilletimes.com. Include name, hometown and phone number; letters never appear anonymously. Letters are limited to one per writer in a month’s time on topics of public interest and may be edited for content and length (limit 500 words). Letters may be rejected from readers with no ties to Northeast Georgia or that address personal, business or legal disputes. Submitted items may be published in print, electronic or other forms. Letters and commentary express the opinions of the authors and not of The Times.