yes, the nights are getting cooler and the leaves are starting to change colors. pumpkins and squash are everywhere you look. as of today, it's officially my favorite season! and politicians across this great nation are amping up the rhetoric, making outlandish claims of competence and professionalism, and calling each other dirty words (hack! ideologue! liberal!) in an effort to transform themselves into the lesser of two/three/six evils.
sadly, even i get a little cynical about elections these days. especially primaries. i tried to vote on tuesday, to make sure my boy deval got the nomination for governor. the emphasis there was on tried, by the way. i went back to my old address in somerville to vote--technically illegal, as i'm a resident of cambridge now, but whatever--only to find out that the somerville elections people had me listed as an inactive voter at my prior address (which was also in somerville, but in another ward). so i asked the nice staff lady if i could just go over there and vote. she said that because i was inactive, in order to vote, i had to sign an affadavit saying that i was who i said i was and that i lived where they said i lived. wouldn't that be (even more) illegal (than what i'm doing now)? i asked. yes, she answered, way more fucking illegal. and the penalty for perjuring myself in such a way is like jail time and possible sexual trespassing. now, i'm pretty sure i can take fisty mcrapesalot in a fight, as i routinely kick the crap out of shaolin monks possessed by demons with my kung fu on the way to work. nevertheless, i didn't want to bike across town because i had homework to do and i wanted a muffin pretty badly. i'll just make sure to reregister for the general, i told her with a steely glint in my eye. i think she got the message.
anyway, voting is harder than it should be. and that's not even counting having to fight my way through the horde of republicans keeping good democrats like me away from the polls. if i didn't have the ninja skills to blend into the shadows they might have stopped me with their burning effigies and 'liberalism killed jesus' signs.
and speaking of republicans being batshit crazy...
the reactionary, torture-loving house passed a new--and wicked unconstitutional--law saying that people will need to present valid photo ids in order to vote in 08. this is to cut down on voter fraud, so that people can't claim to be other people when they vote. this is a stupid law because nobody even does that shit, and if they did, simply having to show id probably wouldn't stop them, just like it hasn't stopped billions of college kids from buying beer despite being 18. also, it's to stop illegal aliens from enacting their master plan of voting in politicians who will approve their communist amnesty idea and make them legal. this is also stupid, as most illegal aliens are goddamned terrified of being found out and that plan i just made up might as well have been drafted by pixies riding on a unicorn. it's pure fantasy, baby.
no, what this stupid law is all about is making sure that the poor and elderly--who are less likely to own cars and thus driver's licenses, and are mostly democratic voters, coincidentally--have a harder time voting. by the way, it's also unconstitutional. and stupid.
* whenever i the hell feel like it
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6 comments:
Can't anyone get a Liquor ID for free? If they don't have a car or don't want to drive?
I mean, who doesn't have some sort of ID? You say it never happens, but accusations of college students voting two, three, even four times occured in 2000 and 2004, for both candidates.
You need a photo ID to fly the friendly skies these days...why not to vote?
because voting is a right (or it should be) whereas flying, etc. is a privelege.
also, it's unconstitutional! amendment 24 states: "the right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election...shall not be denied or abridged...by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax."
having to present id (that requires payment, as liquor ids do) could easily be construed as a poll tax.
furthermore, the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment has been interpreteted by successive supreme courts as guaranteeing the right to vote as fundamental (on par with the right to marry or travel between states) and therefore easily covers the elimination of voter id requirements.
also, liquor ids aren't free. i had to pay to get my mass. liquor id last spring. and even the minimal cost of time and money to get one of those is clearly unconstitutional.
as for college kids voting more than once. first of all, accusations don't necessarily make it true. i can accuse bill frist of poisoning democrats in ohio in '04 to keep them away from the polls, but that (probably) doesn't make it true. and, while it may be a problem, though i doubt it, the burden of qualification (proving voters are who they say they are) falls on local officials and poll monitors, not the federal government.
the bill passed by the house is a travesty of democracy, plain and simple.
Travel in general is a constitutionally protected right:
CASE #3: "The right to travel is a part of the liberty of which the citizen cannot be deprived without due process of law under the Fifth Amendment." Kent v. Dulles, 357 US 116, 125.
I think I could make a case that in today's day and age, one cannot be discriminated against for air travel, since it is a common and everyday travel occurance.
And if voting is a right, how come ex-cons can't vote? Or prisoners? There's nothing in the constitution that says if you go to jail you can't vote...yet no state allows convicts to vote, even though the Constitution says citizens can't be deprived that right.
There are double standards, alright, but the Republicans aren't the only ones responsible.
prisoners can't vote (i am pro ex-con voting, and think those laws are stupid too. guess what, prisoners are mostly minorities. who tend to vote which way?) because they consciously made decisions that have cost them that right, just as it costs them the right to liberty.
the poor and the elderly may have made conscious decisions not to get drivers' licenses/liquor id--want to save the planet and hate drinking, for instance--but whatever their choices, they haven't committed crimes and shouldn't be fined (by having to pay to get an id they don't want) or punished (by not being able to vote).
and air travel is a privelege, especially given so many other travel options. lighting a $100 bill on fire to smoke cigars might be an everyday occurence too, but that doesn't make it any less of a privelege.
also, i wasn't blaming republicans in general, just the hobgoblins in the house. even if we don't agree on the legal backdrop for the bill, it's clearly a partisan push to decrease the turnout of certain types of voter.
Claiming that republicans are keeping cons from voting because they tend to vote democratic is silly, dan. Not a single state, including the democratic bastions of California, new jersey, new york, and massachusetts (where there are a whole six GOP state senators) allow cons to vote.
Also, part of the ID-to-vote plan is making sure everyone who registers to vote gets a free picture ID to that purpose. Therebye debunking your theory that this is a vast republican conspiracy to disenfranchise liberal voters.
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