Sometimes that desire to expand voting opportunities takes on unrealistic qualities. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has placed a measure on t… - John Fund

Unfortunately, the 2008 election was not an anomaly. In 2006, only 22 percent of nearly 2.6 million military voters cast ballots, compared to 41 percent of the general voting-age population. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission found that only 16.5 percent of an estimated six million eligible military and overseas civilian voters requested an absentee ballot, and only 5.5 percent of these ballots were returned and counted. Data from 24 states on the 2010 election shows that only 4.6 percent of eligible military voters cast an absentee ballot that was actually counted.

Voter ID might also help prevent double-voting by someone who is registered in two states. In 2004, a comparison of the voter registration rolls in North and South Carolina by the Charlotte Observerfound more than 60,000 people who were registered in two states, at least 180 of whom were listed ‘as having voted in both states in either the 2000 or 2002 general election.’

There is still time to reduce the chance of another election meltdown, both this year and in future years. But this will not happen unless we acknowledge that the United States has a haphazard, fraud-prone election system befitting an emerging Third World country rather than the world’s leading democracy.