I want a world where people vote. Where people are not presented with stupid obstacles to prevent them from voting. Our country was founded on this unabridgeable right. Yes, it took a while to recognize the right of non whites and women to vote. But we got there.
I am disheartened by efforts to close polling booths in certain districts, to require voters to have a street address (in a place where native Americans have none and where the last election had a margin of victory smaller than the Native American population), to turn away a bus filled with citizens ready to vote early, and rules requiring voters’ id’s to match records so precisely that your ballot will be rejected if the county clerk types “road” instead of “rd.”
The ridiculous defense of these measures is they are necessary to prevent voter fraud. I call bullshit. When the measures exclude many more legitimate votes than those few that are fraudulently cast, and affect a clear group of disfavored voters, their motivation is clear. Depriving people of that right by any means is unpatriotic. And inexplicably so.
I also want a world that casts approbation on dictatorships and autocrats who lure a person to be tortured, beheaded, and cut up into pieces — simply for speaking truth to power. Free speech is a meaningful right. At the least you ought not be killed for it.
I don’t have many non-negotiable lines that cannot be crossed. But let these be two. I will vote keeping those sharply drawn lines in my mind.