| When it comes to administering elections, the first and primary duty of the Secretary of State is to do so without causing widespread confusion. Last Tuesday, Ruth Johnson failed to do that with last-minute instructions to county clerks that were followed by more instructions that were so last minute they came when the election was under way. Ruth Johnson failed in her primary duty as Secretary of State. Ruth Johnson says she's awesome.
Why add the citizenship question in the first place? To uphold the law and to protect anyone who inadvertently registered to vote from potentially committing a felony by giving one last reminder not to vote if not eligible. She claims this didn't cause confusion, except that it did. We linked to Rich Robinson's Op-Ed piece yesterday, which Johnson appears to be taking the unique task of personally rebutting without naming him, in which he said he didn't vote because the question lacked any clear statutory authority to ask. Ruth Johnson said she had to ask it to presumably prevent illegal immigrants from voting, something which doesn't happen. In other words, Ruth Johnson failed to do her first and primary job because she was busy worrying about a non-existent problem. By the way, Kent County's prosecutor said the Legislature ought to make it illegal to pay someone to take a dive in an election, which is what Jase Bolger and Roy Schmidt were guilty of doing. Kent County's prosecutor called it a case of genuine election fraud. Why isn't Ruth Johnson spending more time pressuring the Legislature to adopt a law that would make paying someone to take a dive in an election a crime, rather than worrying about problems that don't exist? |
