Voter ID, mail-in ballots and the bad-faith poisoning of SLO County politics | Opinion

California, and SLO with it, is sleepwalking into a minefield with the serene confidence of a drunk man hunting for the bathroom. Democracies don’t usually fall with a bang. They trip over their own partisanship until authoritarianism looks like a safety rail.

James Madison called it the “mortal diseases” of republics: instability, injustice, confusion. George Washington warned that factional revenge becomes a “frightful despotism” and eventually a permanent one.

In plain English, democracies don’t get murdered. They drink themselves into a ditch.

In San Luis Obispo County, alongside the sunshine and farmers markets, we get a front-row seat to the bad-faith circus that passes for local politics.

Take Tom Fulks, chair of the county Democrats. He and his progressive praetorians won’t be content until every elected office in SLO County is painted a shade of Democrat blue and if the remaining Republicans could be persuaded to pack their bags and flee, so much the better for their monochrome utopia.

That isn’t civic ambition. It’s a banana republic, only with more kombucha on tap.

On the other side is Randall Jordan, head of the county GOP, whose activists chant “stolen election” on repeat. The noise is deafening, the facts barely a whisper.

In 2024, 0.9% of mail-in ballots were rejected, almost all from voter error, not fraud. Yet the GOP keeps flogging doubts about machines and ballot integrity, even though audits, recounts and GOP-packed courts have said it again and again. There’s no evidence of widespread compromise. None.

This is how democracy dies, so we shouldn’t be surprised that Gov. Gavin Newsom is already plotting a full-frontal assault on California’s democratic integrity. Democrats already hold about 83% of the state’s congressional seats with only 45% of voters registered as Democrats. If Newsom’s proposed gerrymander succeeds, that rises to 91% of seats.

That’s not representation. That’s the political equivalent of a Marxist-fascist two-for-one sale. Different labels on the same lousy bottle.

George Washington warned against the “baneful effects of the spirit of party.” The impulse to prize victory over the common good. When maps, voter registration and baseless fraud claims are engineered to guarantee outcomes, opinions harden into permanent power and facts become optional. That’s when democracies leak legitimacy.

Both parties undermine trust. Both expect us to keep cheering while they torch the rulebook.

Besides canonizing gerrymandering as a civic duty, Democrats torch what’s left of their credibility with a holy war against voter ID, shrieking that proving you’re entitled to vote is somehow voter suppression.

In SLO you need an ID to buy a margarita, ID to drive home after and three forms to open the bank account that pays for both. But when it comes to the most sacred civic act we have — voting — suddenly producing ID is tyranny.

Other democracies don’t play this game.

Britain, France, Germany all require voter ID. India, home of 1.4 billion people, has the Aadhaar to verify ID. Estonia goes further, running elections entirely online with secure digital identification. Turnout has gone up. To suggest Americans are uniquely incapable of showing ID is insulting and fuels suspicion where none needs to exist.

Meanwhile, Republicans play their own charade by demonizing mail-in ballots.

In SLO County, where polling places are scarce and jobs don’t follow neat 9-to-5 hours, mail-in voting is a necessity. Without it, farmworkers, nurses and hospitality crews would be disenfranchised. California already layers its mail system with safeguards like barcodes, secure drop boxes, ballot tracking and post-election audits. Fraud is vanishingly rare. The problem isn’t fraud; it’s trust.

Neither party’s protecting democracy. They’re like two drunks arguing over who gets to drive oblivious to the fact that either way, the car ends up in a ditch.

Democracy only works when the rules are trusted by losers as well as winners. That means:

Require voter ID. Not just a driver’s license, but a universal, state-sanctioned digital ID that proves identity beyond doubt. Other less advanced countries have one. If they can manage it, so can California.

Let California keep mail-in voting. To make democracy as accessible and fraud-proof as an Amazon delivery. Barcoded, tracked, on time and on budget.

Stop lying about machines. The Department of Homeland Security called 2020 “the most secure election in American history.”

End gerrymandering. California has an independent redistricting commission because we were sick of politicians treating democracy like an Etch A Sketch. Shake it, redraw it, try again, pretend it never happened.

One side dreams of a monopoly, the other of a conspiracy. Together they’re about as useful to democracy as an ashtray on a motorbike.

If democracy keels over in SLO, it won’t be foreign hackers or ballot-stuffing masterminds. Democracy doesn’t always end in gunpowder, treason and plot. Sometimes it just rots like a damp old sofa until the whole house stinks.

Clive Pinder. Host of CeaseFire on KVEC 920AM/96.5FM. Columnist for The SLO Tribune and The Daily Sceptic. Giving voice to the politically homeless and making the professionally outraged professionally nervous at clivepinder.substack.com.