By Curmudgeon
Lest it be thought that I cannot applaud Republican legislators when they propose good bills, I'd like to applaud Utah State Senator Peter Knudson (R-District 17) for sponsoring SB 52, "Voter Challenge Amendments." The bill "seeks to strengthen the integrity of the process by which voter eligibility can be challenged," says the Utah ACLU, which supports its passage.
From the Utah ACLU website's write-up on the bill:
Why do we need to improve this part of the voting process?Ed Note: All hard-core WCF readers alike (lefties and righties, lifties and smarties) are all invited to chime in at once.
The ACLU of Utah witnessed first hand how Utah’s current voter challenge law was misused to wrongfully accuse a large number of Ogden voters of being ineligible to vote during the 2007 election.Additionally, this tactic has been used in other parts of the state, and against other groups of voters to dissuade eligible and lawful voters from exercising the right to vote.
How will SB 53 impact legitimate voter challenges? How will it affect the work of Election Day officials?
SB 53 will protect the ability for appropriate voter eligibility challenges to be made, but it will also give the challenged voter the opportunity to prove her or his eligibility (without missing out on the chance to participate in Election Day). In addition to assuring that the challenge process cannot be manipulated to exclude voters for political or other reasons, SB 53 actually streamlines the challenge process and free up election official time on Election Day to deal with real election issues.
