Roche's Law

"The only way to idiot-proof something is to get rid of the idiot"
Roche's Law

A perfect example of this law in practice appears in this morning's DP:

On Election Day, Ramon Rodriguez assumed his provisional ballot cast in Boulder would be routed to the right precinct in Denver.

Rodriguez, 19, had never voted before and told election judges he was in the wrong precinct, and even in the wrong county. Upon their instruction, he cast a provisional ballot - a vote he discovered later was not counted at all. Not even for president.

"I don't know how I can trust these people," he said after voting. "It's too late now."

Wait, it gets better!

"What the hell," said Jay Magness, who tried to vote at one downtown Denver precinct even though he's registered in New York City.

His vote likely didn't count.

Ramon and Jay could be the 2 most ignorant voters in the country. I doubt that they are the only ones who tried to vote in the wrong precinct, or wrong county, or wrong state (I still can't fathom the logic behind this one), but they allowed their shortcomings to be chronicled in the newspaper.

Going into this election, there were all sorts of stories about voter registration fraud, provisional ballots, and election judges. Many of these were covered quite nicely by Joshua at View From a Height. That anyone could think that their vote would count if they were in the wrong precinct, or county, or state (again, I can't get over this one) is utterly ridiculous.

I'm all for allowing every vote to count, but I think that the voter has to have some sort of intellectual capacity before casting the ballot. If you can't follow simple instructions, you're hardly qualified to cast a vote for any elected office.

Instead of making the process simpler, let's try to make the voter smarter.