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| Contributor | Ralphie |
| Last Edited | Ralphie Mar 24, 2008 02:26pm |
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| Category | Blog Entry |
| News Date | Monday, March 24, 2008 08:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Voter confusion does happen, and a guy immersed for a third of a century in running a state’s elections certainly would be sensitized to that.
So Idaho Secretary of State Ben Ysursa seems right in his proposal - which looks likely to fly this week through the soon-ending legislature - to require that when a person legally changes his or her name to a political slogan and then runs for office, that the ballot include (just as record store rack jobbers did with the musician Prince) a note that this person was formerly known as, whatever. In this case, the candidate name “Pro-Life“, formerly known as Marvin Richardson. Ysursa pointed out that some voters may check off “Pro-Life” thinking they’re supporting an issue, and another candidate for the Senate as well, resulting in an “overvote” - invalid balloting.
Richardson’s - ah, Pro-Life’s - response was predictably negative: “It’s pretty stupid, really, to say that a voter doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
The problem is that Richardson’s name-change gambit has to be premised on just that kind of confusion: To encourage a voter to approve him based on approval of an issue. Why else would Marvin Richardson, running as Marvin Richardson campaign on a pro-life platform, not be good enough? |
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