No, Canada! We stand on guard from thee. Protecting Idaho elections from ‘maple menace’
All this time we’ve been worrying about election meddling from places like Russia and China, when it turns out all along we should have been keeping a closer eye on those allegedly friendly, deceptively polite Canadians.
“There (are) a lot of reports of people coming from Canada that I’ve been hearing just after coming back from Coeur d’Alene last night, that have been coming over and voting,” state Rep. Dorothy Moon, R-Stanley, said on the House floor Monday. “So this just secures our elections.”
Moon, who is running for Idaho secretary of state, was pitching her so-called election integrity bill, which among other things eliminates student ID as acceptable identification to vote and gets rid of signing an affidavit to verify identity to vote.
Her bill adds requirements to show one photo identification document, one address verification document and one proof of U.S. citizenship document.
Personally, I like the affidavit option, and I have used it myself at the polls to vote. I also have a pretty high degree of confidence and trust in the election systems we have in place to ensure safe, fair and accurate elections.
That said, I could be persuaded otherwise, that there are problems with our system, that some people are voting illegally, that some people have been using gaps in our elections laws to cheat the system and affect election results to their favor.
But I’d like to see some proof of it. I don’t quite buy the argument, “Just because they haven’t been caught doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”
I also am not likely to be persuaded by hearsay, which is what Moon presented on the floor of the House in debating for the bill.
Clark Corbin of the Idaho Capital Sun asked Chief Deputy Secretary of State Chad Houck whether there have been any reports of Canadians slipping over the border to vote.
“In short, no,” Houck told Corbin. “I agree with the premise of tightening up our statutory regulations on registration requirements and the IDs required, but to say that is the reason we need to do it is a stretch. Just throwing things out that are anecdotal as the defense for that doesn’t help. If we’re going to say that, we should be pointing to specific cases, specific numbers.”
Especially on the House floor. Especially when lawmakers’ decision would make it harder for Idahoans to cast votes legally.
The House voted 47-21 to pass the bill.
In addition to all of the Democrats voting “no,” Republican Reps. Ron Furniss, Marc Gibbs, Linda Wright Hartgen, Clark Kauffman, Laurie Lickley, Dustin Manwaring, Caroline Nilsson Troy, Fred Wood and Rick Youngblood voted against it.
The bill has been referred to the Senate State Affairs Committee, which earlier rejected a similar election bill by another secretary of state candidate, Sen. Mary Souza, R-Coeur d’Alene.
Some Republicans are still upset that former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, with many of them still spreading the big lie that the election was stolen.
And it’s having a detrimental effect.
The Brennan Center for Justice, which closely monitors changes in elections laws across the country, this year conducted a poll of nearly 600 local election officials about their jobs.
More than half of the respondents said they’re concerned about the safety of their colleagues, according to Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center. Nearly one in three reported knowing at least one colleague who quit their job in part or entirely because of safety concerns, increased threats or intimidation. And of those who have been threatened, more than half have experienced it up close and personal.
Nearly two in three local election officials said that false information about elections makes their jobs more dangerous. Ninety-five percent blame social media companies for allowing their platforms to peddle outright lies and conspiracy theories.
In Idaho, we don’t even need social media to peddle conspiracy theories.
All we need is the Idaho Legislature, eh?
