Voter Suppression: "It Can't Happen to Me"

[reachout]

Voter Suppression: "It Can't Happen to Me"

By: Pamela Troy - 10/21/03


http://www.liberalslant.com/pt102103.htm



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As a people, we strike a pose the minute the word "vote" is invoked, a starry-eyed, erect, hand-on-the-heart reverence that would make some sense if we actually took voting as seriously as we should.

Unfortunately we don't. In fact, we seem to consider the actual reliability of the vote to be beside the point. "Were legal voters turned away from the polls?" "For heavens' sake get over it. Maybe they'll get to vote in the NEXT election." "Are the electronic voting machines being offered as a panacea actually reliable and verifiable?" "Who cares! What counts is whether they're easy to use and don't have chads!" "Was your vote counted correctly?" "I don't know, but by God, it makes me proud to have done it!" It's as if voting has been demoted from meaningful participation in Democracy to a respectful salute to the flag, a sign of reverence that is the obligation of every patriotic citizen but that only the most irritatingly naïve idealist would imagine had an impact on the real world.

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It's not so much an "It can't happen here," mindset as "It can't happen to me." For the past two decades, the Republican Party has engaged in the systematic and deliberate suppression of the minority vote. White Americans have clucked their tongues and shaken their heads and then thought about other things, secure in the illusion that because the most blatant examples involved nonwhites, it posed no real danger to the Democratic process as a whole.

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[ewagner]

1. Excellent work!

I was surprised that "purge" of felons had such a long and distinguished history......why doesn't it surpirse me then that Jeb and Harris used it again in Florida?

These folks (the repubs) are maybe one level above pond scum.!!!

[Vitruvius]

2. The Rethug corporate media puts 'convenience' above accuracy, not "we"

n/t