Thinking Right: Election shenanigans

Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:

> If Election Day voting is chaotic, don’t automatically blame Secretary of State Karen Handel, who’s in charge. The McCain-Palin campaign expects mischief, stemming from voter registration efforts by a group called the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). In Colorado, a battleground state, some individuals were registered as many as 40 times. Registration duplication and fraud were noted in other battleground states, too.

> Memo to Charlie Crist, governor, state of Florida: Just a hunch, but all those 112,000 ex-felons being registered to vote under a law you signed last year, legislation pushed by People for the American Way, ACORN, the NAACP and the Brennan Center for Justice, are probably not voting Republican. But no need to be partisan to think restoring the voting privilege to ex-felons is not a good idea. Potential criminals should know that some choices have lasting consequences.

> The collapse of Columbus-based Bill Heard Enterprise and its 15 dealerships in seven states undoubtedly had multiple causes. But trying to sell cars in volume to people with bad credit is a suicidal business undertaking. If the bad-debt crisis doesn’t get you, the predatory-lending police will. You can’t put bad-credit risks in homes, cars or anything else and expect to be able to charge for the risk incurred.

> A tax on car insurance to pay for a statewide trauma network, being considered by Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine, a 2010 candidate for governor, is a quick way to take himself out of competition. His reasoning is that wrecks feed emergency rooms. Yes, but so do heart attacks, falls from ladders, bad guys using knives, guns and sticks, and plane crashes. Should we tax health insurance, accident insurance and criminal court dockets, too?

> The gas debacle in metro Atlanta is why you never want to turn decisions about any aspect of our lives over to bureaucracies except in the direst of circumstances —- like, for example, a terrorist attack or a natural disaster. The utter waste of time and money is appalling. The standard rule should be: When a hurricane heads toward the oil rigs and refineries, suspend boutique gasoline requirements for metro Atlanta. Automatically. Let us use any gas we can get.

> You have to hand it to U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall (D-Macon). He’s in a close race in a competitive district —- and he was one of two Georgia congressmen to vote in favor of the $700 billion bailout package. He was right.

> The Chinese are about one tainted-food scandal away from banishment from my food cupboard. Latest is Chinese-made Cadbury chocolate, none of which was sold in this country, recalled because some factories there added melamine, a chemical used to make plastics, to milk. Melamine, rich in nitrogen, was apparently added to watered-down milk to fool quality-control tests for protein.

> Florida Congressman Alcee Hastings, an impeached former federal judge, apologizes for remarks made on a panel discussion sponsored by the National Jewish Democratic Council. Said Hastings: “If Sarah Palin isn’t enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention. Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through.” The observation is too incoherent and idiotic for the untrained intellect to decipher.

> The left finally gets one of its goals: same-day registration and voting. Judges in Ohio uphold the one-week register-and-vote process that runs through Monday. The dream of the left has long been to run a bus sweeping up people off the street to vote. The problem now is that they register, but then don’t go to the trouble of voting.

> In nonpartisan races, especially judicial, the law affecting ballot listing should be changed. Now candidates are listed alphabetically. Since, in the absence of meaningful debate, voters often choose the first name on the ballot, placement should be random or by lottery. Give the “W’s” a fair shot. One race for the Georgia Court of Appeals has seven candidates. A Fulton County Superior Court race has eight.

> Headline: “Lithonia mayor recalled.” Not fondly, as it turns out. The word should be fired, as she was by voters.

> Boy, get these lefties off the ledge. If Sarah Palin wins, they’ll jump.

> Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. His column appears Friday, Sunday and Tuesday.

jwooten@ajc.com

Blog with Jim Wooten six days a week at ajc.com/opinion