In the wake of her latest court defeat (details here), Kari Lake is vowing to “show up to a knife fight with a gun” and “register every man, woman, dog, Gila monster” to vote (read story here).
In a ballyhooed “huge announcement” on Tuesday, May 23, 2023, Lake claimed “the left … will … register anyone.” Lake, who often makes baseless claims, provided no evidence that anyone has been registering ineligible voters, but appeared intent on doing just that when she declared, “We can go by those same rules. If anything goes, anything goes.”
Lake promised a “ballot chasing” operation, which Arizona Mirror described (here) as finding out who your supporters are and reminding them to vote, which a Democratic consultant said is standard practice for political campaigns.
As ball0t-chasing is legal, I don’t have a problem with it. But registering a dog to vote, even as a joke, is definitely not legal. In 2012, the husband of a GOP Senate candidate in New Mexico got into trouble for doing that (see story here).
Other people have done that, too. The point they’re trying to make is it’s easy to slip through the system. But that misses the point. The U.S. election system operates on the honor system. There are safeguards in place, but generally speaking voters are given the responsibility for being honest. It simply costs too much to do background checks on every registrant.
Republicans pull these stunts to argue it should be harder to vote. In short, they argue the system isn’t stringent enough because they broke the law. I think the best response is to prosecute them for breaking the law.
Photos: They look too smart to vote for Republicans.