Two more endorsements

Picture, if you will, a long line at the voting booth. It’s a brown line, and it stretches clear down Mexico way. Those who populate the line are aliens—illegal aliens. They come to this country to take it over from within, fiendishly working two or three minimum wage jobs, plotting all the while, every other year or so, to make their way to the registrar of voters’ offices to vote in the elections.

You’ve been there. You’ve seen ’em at the polling place—all those little brown people who can’t speak English explaining how their signature came to be next to the name “Mike Schmidt” on the voter rolls.

Is this real? You might think so, the way the candidates for secretary of state are acting. But neither the registrar of voters office nor the secretary of state’s office could name a single instance of illegals attempting to vote. Janine Hansen’s party’s Web site, the Independent American Party, which owes its size to an easily confused name, appears to promote the ravings of the radical right fringe. Hansen reportedly supports English-only ballots. That’s right, only English-speaking citizens belong in the Hansens’ America. Yet they consider themselves Constitutionalists. If there is an aspect to speech more fundamental than language, we’d like to know what it is. And we, who actually read the Constitution, understand it to say, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.”

Danny Tarkanian favors a government-issued photo ID. At least he offers some rationale behind his proposal. What Tarkanian hasn’t offered is how a government-issued photo ID would have prevented the voter fraud he uses to raise fears that there’s a systemic problem in this state. Yes, he says in these days of rampant voter apathy, let’s put one more layer of bureaucracy between the voter and the machine.

“We must insure that our elections are free from fraud, and I will prosecute, to the full extent of the law, those who try and rig elections,” says Ross Miller. Instead of worrying about corporate filings or trademarks or securities regulation—some of the actual functions of the office he seeks—Miller wants to combat sexual predators by transferring sex offender registry authority to the office of the secretary of state.

So here we go; once again, we feel forced to choose the least bad candidate. Janine Hansen brings a whole lot of weirdness in her baggage. Nope. Tarkanian? Wasn’t he the guy who divulged a bunch of skeletons because he was afraid Ross Miller was going to make his past a campaign issue? What was it? Associating with a point-fixer when he was an assistant basketball coach at Fresno State? Tell ya what, let’s not put him in charge of the sanctity of our elections and investment securities.

OK, so that leaves Miller. We suggest you vote for him. At least he wants tougher penalties for politicians who break campaign-finance laws. Maybe his dad can tell him how to move that kind of a change through the legislature because right now, there are no criminal penalties for people who break these kinds of laws. Just a reminder: It’s politicians who decided not to have a criminal penalty.

Now, in the race for lieutenant governor, we feel Brian Krolicki is the clear choice. No kidding, he’s actually a good, experienced, trustworthy candidate—a genuinely fine person. How often do you get such a choice in an election?