Mike Ashe, Durham County Board of Elections director, brought a welcome bit of common sense to that organization when he arrived a few years ago. It’s nice to see he hasn’t lost that quality, even after a few years dealing with Durham’s fractious and often noxious political groups. Here’s his take on the absurd lengths that franchise fetishists would go to ensure “full participation”:
“I tend to feel that the rules, policies, regulations are sort of the glue that holds society together, I’m not sure that same-day registration is the panacea and it’s going to get everyone out to vote. … It’s not like we hide the voter registration form.”
As I said a few days ago, the notion that all ballots, no matter how illegally voted or imprecisely marked, must count, is absurd. Ashe seems to agree. His approach to provisional ballots, those ballots filled out by persons when their voting credentials cannot be confirmed, shows the same level of common sense:
“We certainly do not and should not have 100 percent of the provisionals counted because … a lot of them are in the wrong county.”
This guy should be giving workshops around the country.
