I have no beef with MSNBC.com reporter Zachary Roth. He quotes me accurately in today’s piece, “The conservative case to limit voting.”
But the assumptions underlying the article are in my view wrong.
Roth writes:
Progressives think of voting as a right. It’s the way a society of equals makes decisions. That’s why progressives generally see bringing new voters into the process as a good thing in itself. The more people involved, the more democratic the process, and the more legitimate the outcome.
Well, I’m not sure that conservatives have a uniform position on voting and elections but I think it’s fair to say that conservatives also think of voting as a right, but conservatives, unlike left-wingers, don’t think elections should be a free-for-all. Unless you’re overseas perhaps (it takes time for ballots to arrive in America) you shouldn’t be voting weeks or months ahead of Election Day. Ballots should be cast in the same fairly narrow window of time when everybody has had access to the same information, watched candidates’ debates, and had an opportunity to evaluate the candidates and their policy positions. Measures should be taken to make sure that criminals aren’t negating legally cast votes through vote fraud. Voter ID is a must.
Jeffrey Meyer of NewsBusters also weighs in on Roth’s article.