MANCHESTER, Conn.

Election officials throughout Connecticut are properly worried by the sharp increase in absentee-ballot applications being requested by political campaigns and distributed to voters who have not requested them. The practice will cause confusion and facilitate fraud.

Anyone can request an absentee-ballot application for himself or others, and applications can be downloaded from the secretary of the state's Internet site or obtained from a municipal clerk's office. Applications are to be signed by the voter and delivered to the municipal clerk's office, which will hand the voter an absentee ballot or mail one to him. The voter is to complete it, put it in a secure envelope, sign the envelope, place the ballot envelope inside a mailing envelope, and mail or deliver the ballot package to the municipal clerk.

It's a good system for protecting ballot confidentiality. But an absentee voter never has to appear in person before any election official. Nor, as a practical matter, does an absentee voter even have to live in the municipality in which he would vote, nor even still be alive. Of course, the law requires that much but seldom does anyone check. As long as a voter's name remains on the voter rolls, an absentee ballot can be cast in his or her name.

That's why the mass collection and distribution of absentee-ballot applications by political campaigns is so risky. Campaign workers familiar with their towns are able to discern which people on the rolls pay attention and vote regularly and which don't, and the latter become the target for voting fraud.

Indeed, most election-fraud controversy involve absentee ballots, since the absentee-ballot process inevitably separates a voter from the casting of his vote. The ongoing litigation over the Democratic primary for state representative in the 127th House District has revealed one absentee-ballot fraud and screw-up after another. But in-person voting at polling places, where voters must produce identification and complete and cast their ballots in the presence of election officials, is almost impossible to corrupt.

Increasing the security of absentee ballots would be difficult. Being posted on the Internet, the absentee ballot form is available to anyone at any time and can be printed and distributed in infinite numbers.

To confirm that absentee-ballot requests are genuine, election officials could be required to make personal contact with applicants, by telephone or face-to-face interview, but the expense would be great. As a practical matter, probably the most that can be done is to minimize causes for use of absentee ballots and minimize the handling of ballots and applications.

State law authorizes the use of absentee ballots in six circumstances, all of them sensible. But it might be good for the law to restrict any person from distributing more than two absentee-ballot applications, thus taking candidates and campaign workers out of the absentee ballot business.

Of course it would be difficult to police such a restriction, but candidates and campaign workers still could encourage voters to obtain absentee-ballot applications on their own, since it could hardly be easier.

In any case, the less in-person voting, the more election fraud.

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For many years society and the federal government, as codified in Title IX of federal civil rights law, presumed that there were two sexes, male and female; that in general males were physically stronger; and, as a result, that fairness required publicly financed institutions operating competitive sports programs to maintain programs exclusively for women, programs that were equal to those provided for men, for otherwise athletic opportunity for women would tend to be diminished.

Not any more. Lately government, under the pressure of a bizarre new ideology, sustained by political correctness, is presuming that there is no physical difference between the sexes, that men can become women and women can become men just by thinking it , and that men and boys who think themselves women must be permitted to compete against women and girls in athletic events.

In a case arising from Connecticut, the issue of men participating in women's sports -- the nullification of Title IX and the progress achieved thereunder -- has reached a federal appellate court. The law may change but biology won't.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester (CPowell@JournalInquirer.com).