It was election today here in the metropolis of Lewisville, NC.  This little town just west of Winston-Salem is a great place to live and is usually quite civil.  Apparently not during local elections.

Now what passes for rancorous debate here would barely be noticed in my old stomping grounds of Northern Virginia, but as with everything else in life it’s a matter of perspective.  Lewisville’s electoral conflagration began when mayoral candidate Bob Dalton used an open mic at the last town council meeting to complain that town officials had hindered his development projects.  A week or two later Dalton then mailed a letter with several allegations/accusations about the performance of his opponent, Tom Lawson, while on the town’s council.  Lawson then sent out an email refuting Dalton’s statements, and asked for people’s help in spreading the "truth." There’s a synopsis of the whole thing in this Winston-Salem Journal article.

The money quote is Dalton’s, when in response to Lawson claiming that the assertions in the letter are false he says, "He can say anything he wants, as can I. If he wants to cry, let him cry."  Well, free speech protection doesn’t cover misrepresentation of a public official’s stated positions, which is what it sounds like he’s doing.  And how about that last sentence?  What are we, in fifth grade?

Actually it’s kind of like a Mayberry version of Chicago.  In fact we might even have dead rigged voting, just like in the city of big shoulders and dead voters. I say that because when I went to vote today I presented my drivers license without being asked since I’ve always been asked for it whenever I’ve voted in the past.  Well, the guy behind me forgot his license but the pollsters said no problem they’d just look up his name.  I wasn’t sure if that was against the rules or not (to be fair I think everyone in the room knew each other except for me) so I checked out the voter guide when I got home and it looks like there’s no requirement for ID. I remembered always having to use my ID in Virginia so I checked out their rules.  It ends up that you can still vote if you don’t have your ID, but you have to fill out an "Affirmation of Identity" form.  Here in Lewisville you simply have to sign your name on the ballot, with or without ID.

It seems to me that this system opens up a whole range of juicy possibilities.  I mean if I wanted to I could go in and vote as my neighbor or just about anyone in town that I know if I can be sure they won’t be voting themselves.  I could also verify they’re registered to vote by checking them out on the NC database of registered voters. With that information in hand I could go to a couple of different polling places and vote multiple times for my favored candidate.

How would a poll worker know whether or not my signature is legit? And even if the race is close and they did a recount how would they identify a vote that might be suspect?  At least with the Virginia "Affirmation of Identity" process they know which votes might be suspect by that designation.

In a local election where the total vote count will probably be in the hundreds, a couple of people rooking the system like this could make a big difference.  Only about 10% of registered voters are expected to actually vote locally, so in Lewisville that means we might have 1,000 people vote.  If I were to vote three times that means my impact goes from .1% to .3% of the vote, and if I recruited four friends to do the same we’d go from .5% of the vote to 1.5% of the vote.  Say we have a 51%-49% vote, that would give the leader a 510 to 490, or 20-vote margin.  That means my friends and I could increase or decrease the margin by about 75%. That would put us in the "elite" company of Chicago’s original Mayor Dailey, or even Louisiana’s "King Fish" Huey Long.

**Update: According to the Forsyth County Board of Elections there are 8,163 registered voters in Lewisville (see here) and preliminary results show that there were about 1,637 votes cast for mayor (see here).  That means that there was a 20% turnout at the polls, which ain’t bad considering that there were no state or federal level elections going on.  Also, per the comments you’ll see that there is a three vote spread for the last seat on the town council.  All council seats are "at-large" so the top six vote getters on the slate win a seat, which makes every vote quite valuable.**