Honest people make for honest elections

Scott Mitzner

Submitted photo/Scott Mitzner

OPINION — I have volunteered in elections since the 1960s. There is one truth: honest people make honest elections.

The government can “modernize” and spend millions of our tax dollars, but only honest people can give us fair elections. It’s priceless and costs us no tax dollars.

What are some problems and solutions?

1. During the 1980s, TV news reporters figured out by making Americans hysterical with the perceived need for “immediate” election results, they could make Americans into “mindless” TV viewers spending millions for immediate election results.

I remember during the 1960s and ’70s, ballots were counted, and the results published days later in the newspapers.

2. Government workers, unions and their families have fought election reform for generations. Across America, we have had them “volunteering” at the polls controlling the voter turnout. They all get a raises. In Chicago and other big cities, we called it “the machine.

3. For the past 50 years I have asked for part-time election workers. Government and unions can pay their people to work the polls from 5 a.m. to late into the evening and give them a paid day’s rest. Teachers schedule their “institute” days before elections to get paid to work the voters.

Trump and MAGA are making Americans neurotic with their election rhetoric. I remember old-time Republicans and the League of Women Voters getting voter poll lists and going door-to-door before every election checking voter registration.

In 2020, I watched Trump do nothing and blame everyone for his failure. I watched both the Republicans and Democrats for years, each for their own selfish reasons, destroy the League of Women Voters, in my opinion the finest voting rights organization the world has ever known.

Maybe someday I will write the Arizona story — how to institutionalize corrupt elections.

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