The Founding Fathers and Voter ID
Remember when our founding fathers voted in that first election? Did Washington, Jefferson or Adams have to show their ID to voter? Did the white men who brought us the "all men are created equal" document, have to show their ID to vote? Did their wives have to show an ID? Did the white guy who didn't own property have to show an ID? Did Washington's and Jefferson's slaves have to show an ID?
If you answered yes to all these questions, you will probably be voting for Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann in the 2012 Presidential election.
To learn more about what the Confederate Flag wavers think about voter ID, check out this post on the ontherborderline.net blog. Obviously, they assume opposition to voter ID equates to socialism. Actually, anyone who doesn't agree with them is a socialist.
"When local big government socialists like Playboy Roy Sjoberg and James P Nelson blather in the paper against a proposal, then you can rest assure that the idea is probably the right thing. Sjoberg took out an advertisement and Nelson wrote a letter to the editor in the Hudson Star-Observer objecting to the proposed legislation requiring voter ID. Their objection rests on the claim that some that wish to vote may be deterred because they have to prove citizenship or residency while others may be turned away from the polls because they do not hold a drivers license. On the last point, states can issue a special identification for voting purposes.
It appears two reasons exist for an individual to shy away from voting if identification is required. They are either not a citizen or running from the law. Are Sjoberg and Nelson proposing that aliens and criminals have the right to vote?
Long before the idea of same day registration, first time voters would have to file six weeks in advance to allow proper time for election officials to verify citizenship and residency. Shortening the time period means less time for accurate verification and the door for fraud widens.
The real problem in the voting process is that we technically allow thieves to vote for more looting. Stealing defined as taking anothers property through force or fraud. Whether one receives a government issued check in the form of a direct subsidy, payroll, pension, or a form of welfare, then the individual has in effect taken anothers money through government enforced confiscation.
As Benjamin Franklin noted, when the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic. The debate over the County nursing home exemplifies Franklins idea. Proponents favoring more tax dollars for the facility argue on the basis of a non-binding vote of county residents several years ago. Letter writers to the paper voicing support for continued taxpayer financing for the nursing home fall into two categories: government workers that want to protect their salaries and pensions or people that have a relative under the care of the county.
If we are ever to restore our liberties, then maybe it is time to put forth the idea that individuals receiving a government check other than a tax refund or Social Security ( both are means of returning stolen property) to be disqualified from voting.
Can you imagine the letters to the editor if such an idea came to fruition?"
Patrick Henry
"Big government socialist" James P Nelson's voter ID letter to the editor.
"You inquire where I now stand. That is a disputed point. I think I am a Whig; but others say there are no Whigs, and that I am an abolitionist... I now do no more than oppose the extension of slavery. I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can anyone who abhors the oppression of Negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal". We now practically read it, "all men are created equal, except Negroes". When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read, "all men are created equal except Negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics". When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty - to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."Abe Lincoln
First Republican President
8 comments:
Sunny, thanks for posting this. I had no clue that the slander machine at ontheborderline.net was still in operation. Last time I checked there the site was down.
Of course, they don't allow me to respond to their attacks and have a discussion. But, as you pointed out, everyone is a socialist who doesn't agree with them.
You would be thinking the people who get escorted out of public school board meetings for expressing their free speech rights would understand what the point of voter suppression is. But then again, I suppose the suppression of votes and free speech is only worth fighting for if it involves middle-class white boys.
Nothing new on that side of the borderline...the echo chamber of the idiocracy continues to drool in true village idiot style.
People who do not pay property and/or income tax absolutely should be disenfranchised. That is to say, only taxpayers with “skin in the game” can rightly be trusted with the vote.
This would necessarily exclude not only those currently on the dole, but anyone else who pays nothing more than payroll taxes – that is, fees which can be described – at best – as social insurance, but more properly as contributions to a legalized Ponzi scheme.
The very least that we property/income taxpayers should be guaranteed is that the non-taxpayers who vote are citizens of this country, that they have not been legally enjoined from voting, and that they are voting only once. A positive photo ID requirement is nothing more than prudent and reasonable first step towards that end.
RK:
Sounds like you might have to work on getting the Constitution amendment to pull off your plan.
I'm opposed to a poll tax. As in, you have to pay to vote.
Mr. Roadkill:
Of course, on your suggestion to require voters to pay property tax and/or income tax, you would want to start from a level playing. You know, to make things even for those who have been created by the "free market" system since day 1. You know, those black slaves and Native Americans and Mexican fruit pickers.
I would assume you would spread the property around so eveyone had enough property to qualify. Maybe you would draw the cutoff line at whatever year we quite importing slave labor or the year we finally quit chearing the Native Americans -- if we indeed have -- out of their land.
Perhaps, you suggested solution doesn't have anything to do with "fairness."
I wonder if Roadkill would allow illegal immigrants who own property and pay taxes in the US to vote?
Why does everyone always fail to mention the Founding Mothers?
I do not believe we need new legislation for ID’s, and I totally reject linking tax paying to voting rights. Having stated that, I do believe it prudent to require unregistered voters or voters who have changed their voting locale to PROVE both their citizenship and the minimum required time for local residency. Sufferage is a constitutional right protected by 5 separate amendments, and subsumes one to be a citizen first..
If one is new the country, having been admitted under the current laws of the United States, there are means for citizenship verification without a state or national ID. So, to the extent that legal citizenship is an issue we don’t need new legislation for ID’s, but we do need legislation requiring proof of legal status before being eligible to vote.
The argument by some (flippantly above, for example) that it is legally and morally justified to disenfranchise voters merely due to the fact that they do not pay property or income tax is counterproductive and wrong. Taxation is a matter of its own, and we can have a legitimate debate about both property and income taxation, but those features of our current government’s policy and law have very little, if anything, to do with the fundamental right to vote.
Being coerced into paying taxes at the point of a gun is immoral, but to then tie this immoral act to the right to vote merely serves to justify and further entrench the initial moral wrong of coercive taxation. Moreover, such a move would, on its face, disenfranchise once again many who at one time did not have sufferage (such as women and blacks). If your spouse or unmarried partner does not pay taxes then they would be prevented from voting – surely this is not what is intended but is the obvious result of such nonsense as eliminating the right to vote based on whether you pay onerous, coercive, taxes or not.
The right to vote (or abstain from voting) is a moral obligation of citizens, not merely taxpayers. To equate citizenship with tax paying is obscene and anti-American.
Frank Zappa was a founding Mother.
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