Say What?

I don't care much for NewsMax. They're far too strident for my tastes. Sometimes, however, they carry stories that no one else does, so I check them from time to time. Somehow, I got on their mailing list recently, and today I got something that made me laugh. You'd have to subscribe to get it, so I'll just copy what little they put on their web page here.

atest: Democrats plan to steal election, strategist warns ... Dem-backed 527s and unions plan to spend $300 million on "voter turnout" alone, more than double Bush's war chest ... 2.5 million Democrats in key states will be registered by Nov. 2 ... New York Times reveals Democrats are outregistering Republicans by more than 5 to 1 in Ohio and Florida ...

The brief summary they provide here really portrays the entire article. Liberal-supported 527 orgs are putting a ton of money into registering voters in the battleground states in the hope that they can turn the tide of the election.

NewsMax calls this "stealing" the election. Mind you, if they are deliberately registering people who are not eligible to vote, that would be attempting to steal an election, but NewsMax doesn't provide any evidence for that charge. According to NewsMax the very act of registering people to vote is attempting to steal an election!

By that logic, attempting to get people to not vote at all would attempting to preserve an election wouldn't it? When did registering people to vote become a "bad thing"? I must admit I'm stumped.

Every election we decide who will lead us at every level of government. Sometimes those elections involve less than 25% of our population. I think that's a travesty, and I think anyone who opposes registering more people to vote and getting them to the polls is flatly wrong.

I've often thought that voting should be mandatory. Perhaps it could be tied to something tangible. For example, if you don't vote you're not eligible for something or you can't receive public assistance (or perhaps your assistance is reduced by some percentage) or your taxes are higher by some percentage, etc., etc. Maybe I'm just hallucinating, but it seems to me that voting is an obligation that every citizen should be required to fulfill.

Call me crazy, but I also think every 18 year old should have to serve the country for a minimum of two years in some capacity - the armed forces, community service, or some other capacity, before they go to college or begin a career. I suspect it would solve a lot of problems our country has.