As you contemplate casting your vote this election cycle, you need to ask yourself: Does every registered voter’s vote actually need to count? I think that every rational person would agree that “yes” is the appropriate answer to that question.
One cannot become a “registered voter” without proof of citizenship. Which means that every registered voter should be allowed to vote, and should have every reasonable expectation that their vote will actually count. This has become especially acute and complicated in this year so fundamentally affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cue the recent myriad nationwide efforts to curtail not just the circumstances by which registered voters can cast their ballots, but also the circumstances under which those legally registered votes will be allowed to be counted. In Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and myriad other states, the Republican party has sought, via state legislation and the courts, to restrict the voting rights of not just those who may vote fraudulently, but those legally registered voters who seek to cast their ballots by mail in a uniquely dangerous time in regard to public health.
It leads one to ask: Why are Republicans so afraid of allowing more people to cast their votes outside of the traditional in-person, election day setting? They cite fraud, fraud, fraud. For which there is scant evidence, evidence, evidence. The true answer is that more votes cast mean less chance the increasingly reactionary Republican party can remain in power. When you can no longer compete in the free marketplace of ideas and you refuse to change, the only other option is to restrict the voices of those who may decide that your ideas are bad. Voter suppression, gerrymandering, and racist scare mongering and scapegoating are the Republican fall back strategies – their own party level Custer’s last stand.
America is better than this. Republicans are absolutely correct when they proclaim that the USA is the best and greatest country ever founded on the face of the earth. What they are wrong about is that “patriotism” is equivalent to blind denial of where America has failed to live up to its promises to *all* of its citizens. Those who seek to deny America’s shortcomings in regard to how it sometimes fails to live up to its own ideals are not patriotic. Blind loyalty is not patriotism, but worship, and leaves no room for improvement. America is better than that, and so are its citizens. No political party can claim a monopoly when it comes to American patriotism, and we should all keep that in mind when casting our votes this election cycle, as well as while those votes are being counted.
31
Oct
2020