DailyRandomShit for 2016-06-21
Democracy, doesn’t that mean one vote per citizen and that every citizen’s vote counts equally? Today marks a dark day in overt voter suppression when one population was being systematically blocked from exercising their constitutional right to participate in the political process. Neither political party has a sterling historical record when it comes to suppressing the freedom of citizens to vote when the group being suppressed was part of the opposing party’s power base. It was shameful in 1964 and it is shameful today. It may not be as overt as it was in 1964, and it is often cloaked with new-speak fearmongering terms like “preventing voter fraud,” but it’s just the same ol’ political games designed to discourage or block citizens from voting. Tactics like off-duty law-enforcement officers near the entrances of polling places, shorter-voting hours, fewer polling places, less-early voting opportunities, gerrymandering … nothing as drastic as the murder of three civil rights workers whose mission was to help African Americans register to vote, but the intent is pretty obvious. It’s shameful for those who claim to hold Liberty in such high value, to deny the same Liberty to their fellow citizens.
Please checkout The Southern Poverty Law Center’s FB page for more info on the ongoing struggle and the following NPR article on how voting district maneuvering has countermanded the basic democratic promise that all citizens votes are count equally.
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