Letter to the editor: What can be done to restore the value of our vote?

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Respect must be earned, not given away. Is that not true? Why would a citizen give away something of value without the knowledge of value? 

That is what has happened in states that allowed votes to be counted without the need to be verified. As we all know here in the state of Washington, our signatures are on file at the county level. And when we vote, our signatures are compared to the signature on the ballot and verified or rejected if they do not match. When absentee balloting is used, there is a required signature that is used to verify that the signature on the ballot is valid. When in this last election in states that sent out ballots to all citizens who had at one time registered to vote, there was no way to verify that the person still lived at the address where the ballot was sent, or if the citizen is still alive. 

There was also no signature to compare to as we have in the state of Washington. Why do we here in the state of Washington take the time to verify the signatures if other states do not? We would save money and time by just sending out ballots to all citizens who have ever registered to vote, and counting votes would be much quicker. 

Respect for the electoral system would be affected if this were to happen. I do not have the same confidence as I have had in the past elections. There is a movement to accept this nonverification approach to voting as it happened in this last election. 



States that have allowed this new approach to voting have effectively changed without national approval our attitude as to the value of our vote. I for one am appalled at this devaluing of my vote. What can be done to restore the national value of our vote? I am not comfortable with what I am about to say, but it is time we have a national system of citizen registry, because we are being forced to by citizens who have no respect for the freedoms that we have had and are using these freedoms to change our country! And not for the better. The time is now for something to happen. 

This last election is an example of chaos. We will never actually know who got the most votes. When a dead person's vote is as valuable as mine, there is something wrong! I have lost respect for the system that we now have and the subjective media that has no respect for facts. Much of the balloting is not nor can it be verified as valid, so how can a person be confident as to the outcome of an election?