Before describing how the VIN works in the process of voting, I discuss which entity, the federal or state government, should issue the VIN. Traditionally, the state has had the authority to determine which citizens are enfranchised and the rules for their registration, but there are good reasons why this function should be the responsibility of the federal government. Firstly, the federal government determines who can be admitted into the country and who can be put on a path to citizenship. Arguably, the most important function of a citizen, for good or ill, is the exercise of the franchise, so the qualifications for exercising the franchise should be determined by the entity that creates the citizen in the first place. Secondly, in states where voter registration rules are extremely lax or corrupt, politicians who are elected by such a process are going to do what they can to perpetuate the process and spread it around to other jurisdictions. When election results in such states become untrustworthy, and the “elected” representatives pursuant to such a process make national policy for all, then the people in law abiding states feel effectively disfranchised. We see this with the Democrats’ proposed Congressional bill HR1, which uses the power of the federal government to mandate measures that destroy voter integrity, such as requiring no-fault absentee ballots, and hindering or outright preventing state officials from verifying a voter’s eligibility. Virtually everything that this Act would regulate is an attack on voter integrity. This clear lack of an integral process was the basis for the Texas lawsuit challenging the 2020 election irregularities in the disputed states. In that suit, Texas claimed that certain states allowed deviations to their own election laws, weakening voter eligibility verification. The case was eventually dismissed by the Supreme Court, not on its merits, but because it lacked standing. There is already a system in place that can be used to help make voter eligibility secure: filing your individual tax return with the Internal Revenue Service. We are all well aware that the main purpose of filing form 1040 with the IRS is to make proper account of how much tax is owed: to get back what is overpaid, or to pay what is still owed. This form also requires the same essential information that is used to validate voter eligibility, such as living status, citizenship status, age, and address. Therefore, I propose that, after filing IRS form 1040, a federal Bureau of Voter Registration provides eligible voters a unique Voter Identification Number (VIN), which confirms that the voter has been properly registered, is to be used in the upcoming general election, and will then expire at the end of the year. Note that the IRS is used only for data collection and that the VIN is conferred only by the Bureau of Voter Registration, which will have legal responsibilities separate from the IRS. This may seem like a legal fiction to some, but it is proposed in this manner specifically to avoid Americans from submitting duplicate data to two different government bureaus, and because Americans are already in the habit of submitting an IRS 1040 on an annual basis. Multiple voter safeguards result from this process. Because individuals submit their Social Security Number (SSN) when filing form 1040, the government knows (or should know) whether the individual is a citizen, and also still living. If the individual has a legal worker’s permit and an SSN, but is not a citizen, then a VIN is not issued. It may be necessary for voters, when registering for the first time, to submit a birth certificate or certificate of citizenship. If the Social Security Administration is notified that the individual has expired, then that person’s VIN becomes inactivated, meaning a denial of access for any fraudulent person using a deceased person’s VIN in a voting machine. The VIN should consist of sixteen characters (like a credit card number) and include alphas for extra security. It will include a code for the specific district or precinct in which the person votes and be inactive (denial of access) in any other. If a change in address is made after filing the 1040, the voter must file an addendum to get a new VIN, and the old VIN will be inactivated. For law abiding taxpayers who are eligible voters, the registration process can be passive: as long as the data provided on the 1040 is true, the government automatically issues the filer a VIN. For those who have no income and are otherwise eligible to vote, voter registrants must proactively submit the form 1040 and check a box that indicates that the form is submitted only for purposes of receiving a VIN, or they must apply directly to the Bureau of Voter Registration. The federal government knows exactly how many VINs are issued, and in which district, so that vote totals cannot exceed the number of VINs issued per district. At the polls, the voter enters his or her VIN in an electronic voting machine when voting. After voting, the machine prints out a time-stamped record of the vote, which can be retained by the voter. After leaving the polling station, voters can access the election database on their home computer by entering their VIN. The information returned will show the voter for whom they voted and the time they voted. Obviously, if the election software is programmed correctly, this information will match exactly the voter’s retained time-stamped copy. Absentee balloting should be strictly regulated and only permitted for extreme cases. When submitting an absentee ballot, the voter must enter his or her VIN on the printed ballot and submit to local election officials to arrive at least five days before the date of the election. After election officials enter the ballot, the time-stamped record of the vote is mailed back to the absentee voter. In fact, as voters’ confidence in the system builds over time, there is no reason why everyone couldn’t vote from their home on Election Day. At this point, something needs to be said about privacy issues, as some will claim that the privacy of the vote is breached due to the matching between the individual and the VIN. But it is already the case that mail-in ballots have the same problem: the voter’s name and address are (or can be) known, along with the selections made on the ballot. Privacy can be maintained by following protocols that control the handling of the ballot in such a manner that voter identification and voter choices are kept separate. The benefit of the method described here is that the voter can actually verify if his or her vote was recorded accurately, a feature that the current method of mailing in ballots does not permit. At any rate, it is already illegal for government officials to disclose a citizen’s private information, such as income or medical data, and such prohibitions must be extended to officials that handle ballots as well as those who issue the VIN in the first place. In any event, concern for privacy must not be allowed to override the security and integrity of any voting system. I have found that in discussions on this subject, concern trolling about privacy is often used as a pretext to cover fraudulent activity. The process I have described so far is based on using a computerized system, which I believe to be the only feasible system in a country as populous as the United States. Talk of going back to “paper ballots” seems fanciful, since most cases of fraud have involved the sudden appearance of unprocessed paper ballots, or a large collection of mail-in ballots, and the inability to assess their legitimacy. However, a computerized system must have the full confidence of the American people. Consider that Americans interact with and have confidence in other national-scale computerized systems every day, such as online retailers. Millions of customers access online retailers’ inventory, sometimes even viewing the inventory level (e.g. “only 3 in stock, order soon” etc.), and they allow sensitive financial data such as a credit card number to reside on the retailer’s database. These customers, however, are not able to change the stock unit’s price. The retailers would quickly go out of business if that could happen. In the same manner, a securely programmed computerized voting system will not permit a change to a person’s vote, since every vote will be subject to a check by designated online poll watchers and the voters themselves. Also consider government run computer systems, such as used by the Social Security Administration. Here too, citizens cannot change the amount of their Social Security check or access their history and add work years for the purpose of increasing their eventual payout. Presumably the system is secure enough to counter such activity, although it must require considerable security surveillance to assure it. So yes, there can be a program designed to allow maximum transparency of the process while maintaining virtual inviolability of the data. I state “virtual” because all trusted systems are inviolable up until the moment we discover that they are not. However, the inability to guarantee perfection is not a reason to abandon a computerized approach to election safety and integrity. Instead, we must apply constant vigilance, identify any weak links, and make continuous improvements to the process. Some will object to a federal agency becoming essentially a clearing house for voter registration. But Congress has already breached state sovereignty with the “Motor Voter” Act, which was passed thirty-one years ago, and as already stated, the Democrats’ HR1 contemplates massive federal regulation of the state’s registration process. Today we need a federal bill that comes down on the side of electoral security and integrity. The Republicans have introduced the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. This Act focuses primarily on preventing non-citizens from voting by allowing shared databases between agencies that identify non-citizens who are in country and may have falsely registered to vote. Most Americans probably thought that such data sharing was already happening. While this bill was debated in Congress, Democrats made it clear that they cannot be entrusted with assuring electoral integrity. Their main talking point was that it is already illegal for non-citizens to vote: apparently nothing further need be done on this front. They stood in near unanimous opposition to any verification method for proving a voter’s citizenship. If that is their sincere position, as expressed on the floor of Congress, how can we be satisfied that they are performing due diligence in carrying out existing laws that presumably prevent non-citizens from voting? The SAVE Act passed with only five Democrats supporting it and 198 opposing, and it will presumably go nowhere in the Democrat-controlled Senate. While the Act provides necessary reforms, it does not nearly go far enough. A one-to-one match between the registrant and the voter as described herein would go much further to prevent fraud and irregularities. This is not an issue that we can be satisfied with half-measures. The current state of voter registration in America is a sham. Republicans must embrace a total overhaul of the voter registration process, not just incidental processes such as requiring photo IDs. They must ignore objections that this advocacy is in any way racist, that it disfranchises voters, or that it attacks the right to vote. Indeed, every ineligible fraudulent voter disfranchises a true eligible voter. There was election fraud in the 2020 election, the only question is whether it was sufficient to affect the result. We may never know the answer to that question with certainty. But if we fail to improve the security and integrity of elections, we know with certainty that fraud will increase in future elections.

America is a tribe with a proposition. The proposition depends on the tribe continuing to flourish.