Tag Archives: voting

Absurdity on Steroids

Civics, General, ,

I have a long-standing issue with people who choose to cast aspersions on childless couples, as if not having children was a defective character trait of some sort. Questions people might ask are: Why doesn’t Mr./Ms. XYZ have children? Are they having problems? Don’t they want any?

Of course, “they” can be easily interchanged with “you”, if you happen to be the target of interrogation about your reproductive status.

As someone who is childless, I’m embarrassed to confess I’ve harbored such thoughts about other childless couples because it’s none of my business any more than it is someone else’s business when they ask me why didn’t I and my spouse have any kids. Those comments are rooted in ignorance and intentionally or not, can feel like you are conveying that you think someone is lacking in something if they aren’t a parent.

(And if you were to argue, “Oh noooo! I never meant that!”, then why the hell did you ask about someone’s child status – or lack thereof, in the first place?)

There’s a multitude of reasons why a couple is childless and often, the reasons are deeply personal and excruciatingly painful to bear. And sometimes not: some people simply don’t want children. In any case, it’s nobody’s damn business. Ever.

Unfortunately, some people want to make it their business, be it family members, friends, or strangers, with expressions of pity (highly unwanted and unwarranted), shame, or outright judgement. Or all of the above. To my mind, this is an insidious, societal malady – judging people’s worth based on whether or not they have children.

I imagine this has been going on for millenia and still does, around the world – including here in the United States.

Casting aspersions on those who aren’t parents by a political candidate or politician is particularly galling and potentially dangerous. (I’ll get to the dangerous part in a bit).

Case in point: last weekend, J.D. Vance, a U.S. Senate candidate from Ohio, called out the “childless left” whom he said have “no physical commitment to the future of this country” in a fiery speech given to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s conference on the Future of American Political Economy.

He seemed to be aiming at certain politicians he dislikes: he specifically named Vice President Kamala Harris, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, citing them as the childless future leaders of the Democratic Party.

“Why is this just a normal fact of …  life, for the leaders of our country to be people who don’t have a personal and direct stake in it via their own offspring?” Vance asked.

Why do you ask such a question, Mr. Vance? What’s not “normal” for you, is perfectly fine for others. A non-issue.

He cynically attacked some Democrats’ suggestion that voting rights be given to 16-year -olds by saying:

“Let’s do this instead. Let’s give votes to all children in this country, but let’s give control over those votes to the parents of the children.” He continued, asking, “Doesn’t this mean that nonparents don’t have as much of a voice as parents? Doesn’t this mean that parents get a bigger say in how democracy functions?”

Vance was offering a counterproposal: instead of offering the vote to 16-year-olds, increase the voting power of parents by multiplying their vote by the number of children they have.

Never mind that there are likely childless Republican couples who exist in the USA – the fact that this Senate candidate bothered to attack childless couples is despicable. And they ought not to have the right vote because of not having children?!

What a fucking moron!

Childless couples and couples with children alike pay taxes. Property taxes. School taxes. Taxes that go toward infrastructure. Taxes to support social safety nets for FAMILIES. Federal, state, and local taxes…etc, etc. If they’re paying taxes, then they have the right to vote.

Vance said childless Americans have “no physical commitment to the future of this country”. What’s he going to suggest next: that childless adults are not Americans?

He said,

“We should worry that in America, family formation, our birth rates, a ton of indicators of family health have collapsed,” the candidate said, highlighting the severity of America’s ongoing fertility crisis and calling it a “civilizational crisis.”

I don’t appreciate that he is valuing a person’s worth based on their ability to reproduce, as if the only value a woman has is if she’s a baby vessel and the man is a sperm bank.

Welcome back to the Dark Ages!

This guy, J.D. Vance, wrote a memoir called Hillbilly Elegy, which I read with my local library’s book discussion group. It was okay, I think. I don’t remember it well – it didn’t stick in my mind for days afterwards as some good memoirs do…and I’ve read many memoirs in my lifetime. I DO remember most readers in our group weren’t terribly impressed with his memoir. That’s not telling you much about his book, is it? Just my personal opinion of course! (Otherwise, I would be gushing over it…which I’m not.)

Now the creepy, potentially dangerous part:

Since Mr. Vance spewed out his anti-childless poison, the folks over at Fox & Friends decided it would be cool to take his proposal a step further by promoting the idea that “childless” Americans should not be allowed to participate in society by voting. Hey, they thought it wasn’t such a bad idea! They said it was an interesting idea.

Host Will Cain said. “I think it’s an interesting idea. I’m into interesting ideas. Let’s think about it. Let’s talk about it. He’s saying childless leaders are making decisions that are short-term in mind, not focused on the long-term future health of this country because they don’t have a stake in the game. Parents have a stake in the game, they have children so give parents a bigger say.”

FOX News has a scary-large number of viewers, in the millions, I believe. What a nice way to plant into their viewers’ minds the idea that people who don’t have children are of less value as human beings – as people who apparently lack character for not propagating the population, not least of all during a pandemic and a worsening climate change crisis. And therefore ought not have the right to vote.

Does J.D. Vance and the folks at Fox and Friends have any friends and relations who don’t have children for whatever reason? If so, would they gladly tell them that they think childless couples have “no physical commitment to the future of this country” and therefore, should NOT vote?

I can only fervently hope this SICK and dangerous idea of Mr. Vance’s doesn’t spread like wildfire and become entrenched as “mainstream” conservative thinking, let alone become the impetus for one more disgusting voter suppression bill.

Women and men are so much more than a baby vessel or sperm bank and have participated and contributed to the good of America since way before anyone alive today can remember, with child or without child. You need only remember the decades-long battle that women fought for women’s suffrage; the marches for civil rights for EVERYONE that continue today; and the advances in science and medicine that conquer cancer and face down a pandemic. Among many other scientific wonders.

Was a person’s status as a parent or not truly the central focus of any of those battles to move humanity forward? I don’t think so! You get the idea.

Let’s keep it that way.

Sources

The Federalist
Salon

Happy July 4th?

Civics, General, Social Justice,

The United States’ Independence Day is here, but I feel cautious about it.

Why?

Because in less than a year, we’ve had a presidential election which the losing former president continues to rant and rave about as a stolen election – and what everyone else except his followers regard as The Big Lie; we’ve witnessed the 2020 election followed by string of failed court cases to contest the election as well as ongoing bogus “audits” of multiple states’ ballots; we’ve survived a horrific insurrection on United States committed by followers of the former Dear Leader – incited by no less than him.

And according to the Brennan Center for Justice, state lawmakers have enacted nearly 30 laws since the 2020 election that restrict ballot access, according to their new tally as of June 21st.

More than half of these new laws make it harder to vote absentee and by mail, after a record number of Americans voted by mail in November.

The Brennan Center for Justice reports that by May 14, 2021, legislators introduced 389 bills with restrictive provisions in 48 states. Twenty-two bills with restrictive provisions have already been enacted. In addition, at least 61 bills with restrictive provisions in 18 states are moving through legislatures: 31 have passed at least one chamber, while another 30 have had some sort of committee action (e.g., a hearing, an amendment, or a committee vote).

Morever, on July 1st, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld voting restrictions in Arizona and signaled that challenges to new state laws making it harder to vote would face a hostile reception from a majority of the justices.

On a brighter note, the next day, July 2nd, the New Hampshire Supreme Court struck down a 2017 state law crafted by Republicans that implemented new requirements for same-day voter registration that critics say made it more difficult for college students to vote.

In a unanimous 4-0 decision, the state Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling from last year that found the law, known as Senate Bill 3, violated New Hampshire’s constitution “because it unreasonably burdens the right to vote.”

The state Supreme Court said that the law “must be stricken in its entirety.”

Yippee!

Yet Georgia and Texas have already passed severely restrictive laws, some of which I discussed in detail in my March 1st post. I think it’s worth pointing out again that multiple news sources report that various state lawmakers have argued that these restrictive measures are necessary because, “the public has lost confidence in our election system,” but they refuse to acknowledge the reason some voters believe elections are unfair. However, some of those same legislators spent months spreading disinformation about the integrity of the 2020 election.

I think it would be exquisite justice if these hundreds of laws boomerang back to these lawmakers in the fashion that New Hampshire’ Senate Bill 3 was by the state’s Supreme Court: “must be stricken in its entirety”. Even more so, if the public said “enough!” via the ballot box and sent these lawmakers home.

Meanwhile, Congressional Democrats had better use its majority power to pass the For The People Act, H.R.1/S.1, which sets national minimum standards for our elections based on bipartisan best practices, ensuring that Americans’ ability to access the ballot isn’t dependent on which state they live in. The Act also aims to set up automatic voter registration, expand early voting, ensure more transparency in political donations and limit partisan drawing of congressional districts, among other provisions.

It apparently is something too toxic for the GOP, as demonstrated recently: they filibustered a vote in the Senate to start debate on it, in June. They didn’t even want to talk about it! Cowards.

Congressional Democrats must do the same for the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, H.R. 4. which would revitalize the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to defend against racial discrimination in our elections.

And the president must not leave office without having signed these bills. I requested that of him in a letter I sent by post this week.

When those bills are passed and President Biden signs them, THAT will definitely be something to celebrate!

Pooh on the naysayers and cynics! They can take a take a trip to the nearest toxic waste dump and deposit their poison there. Or go move to the country of their favorite authoritarian regime, since they seem to despise democracy so much with their willful and deafening silence on the 1/6 Insurrection and their stifling, voting rights laws.

Who in their right mind would want to celebrate that?

Sources

The New York Times
The Texas Tribune
CNN
Brennan Center for Justice at New York University
Wikipedia – Voter Suppression
CNBC
Campaign Legal Center – The Bipartisan Origins &Impact of the For the People Act (H.R. 1/S 1)
Campaign Legal Center
Human Rights Campaign

Fight for Your Right to Vote!

Civics, General, Social Justice,

Maryland’s House of Delegates passed the Student & Military Voter Empowerment Act the 3rd week of February 2021; I signed the petition to urge the Maryland Senate to pass it.

If passed, the bill will ensure that institutions of higher education*:

• Have a student voter coordinator, who will take point on forming a plan to support student voter registration and ensure students have the information they need to register to vote and turn out.

• Post the link to the online voter registration form on the website students use to register for classes to keep it visible.

• Provide input to local boards of election as they select polling locations for our elections.

And the bill will ensure military members can easily to register to vote online.

According to Common Cause Maryland, over 72% of people between the ages of 18-24 did not vote in the 2018 election. Historically Black colleges and universities report declines in overall participation, largely due to lack of access to information on how to register and vote, and thus, leading to young people voting less frequently than the rest of the population. But this legislation would help to reduce the barrier faced by young people who want to participate in our elections.

Attending college and university is often the first time many young people are on their own for the first time – a time to grow and learn. It was for me. I remember I looked forward to voting, to finally participating in society!

It seems to me that colleges and universities are well-positioned to inform students about voter participation; after all, what college or university doesn’t have a student government? If colleges and universities encourage students to vote for their fellow students, why can’t these institutions of higher education make it easy and accessible for them to vote in the outside world?

Voter registration, accessing voter information, and the act of voting made simple and accessible to ALL eligible voters – including students – this is a no brainer, right?

Young people, after all, are our future!

Empower them to vote! Some of them may be governing how we live someday, when we’re old and gray.

I’d rather vote for an informed candidate who (hopefully) respects the value of every eligible voter participating than a candidate who only thinks certain people ought to vote and harbors some perceived paranoia over voter fraud despite FACTS to the contrary.

As the most recent US Presidential Election 2020 laid bare.

Yes, even after the Director of United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency – the agency handling election security, declared the 2020 presidential election was was the country’s most secure ever, repeatedly debunked the claims of massive fraud and election interference by the former president (and his cronies) to Congress and the media, a certain segment of society continues to believe the 2020 election was a fraud. A steal.

Even after the former president’s powerful lackey in the form of his US Attorney General said the US Justice Department found no evidence fraud to make a difference in the outcome of the election, that wasn’t enough to convince the president’s followers that the election was valid. The former president and many of his followers could not accept that the majority of the people spoke: they wanted a different president.

But what punishment did America get from those who could not accept reality?

No. 1: the January 6th, 2021 insurrection upon the nation’s capital to “Stop the Steal”.

And insidiously, as of February 27th, 2021, at least 253 voter suppression bills have now been introduced across the country in 43 states – just in 2021 alone. You read that right: 2021…THIS year!

Laws in direct contradiction to Maryland’s Student & Military Voter Empowerment Act.

Mother Jones journalist Ari Berman reported earlier this month on the GOP’s ongoing nationwide push to make voting more difficult, particularly for communities of color and other Democratic-leaning constituencies – and in some cases to empower state legislatures to overturn election results.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice’s report,

These proposals primarily seek to: (1) limit mail voting access; (2) impose stricter voter ID requirements; (3) limit successful pro-voter registration policies; and (4) enable more aggressive voter roll purges.

Here’s a very condensed sampling of proposed nightmarish laws to come:

Georgia

• Eliminating no-excuse absentee voting, which was passed on a bipartisan basis in 2014, and limiting absentee voting to only a few categories of voters who fit into narrow, predetermined exceptions.

• Restricting county election officials’ ability to utilize mobile precincts to serve rural and other hard-to-reach voters.

• Removing restrictions on poll watchers that keep election officials safe without facilitating additional transparency for voters.

• Eliminating automatic voter registration, making it harder for Georgians to register to vote and less efficient for Georgia election officials to update and maintain accurate voter rolls.

In most cases, according to various sources, these state lawmakers argue that these restrictive measures are necessary because, “the public has lost confidence in our election system,” but they refuse to acknowledge the reason some voters believe elections are unfair: because those same legislators spent months spreading disinformation about the integrity of the 2020 election.

Arizona

• Require voters to obtain a notary stamp on all absentee ballots, a not only burdensome but costly requirement.

• Prohibit voters from mailing their absentee ballots to election officials, instead requiring them to return them in-person.

• Require voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship in order to register to vote—a likely violation of federal law. 

• Purge eligible voters from the rolls if they change their address—even if that address is still in Arizona—another likely violation of federal law.

FYI: Arizona has had a robust mail voting system for decades with no widespread fraud or administrative issues, and Arizona voters across the political spectrum have been voting by mail since long before the COVID-19 pandemic—78% of Arizona voters voted by mail in 2018, according to Campaign Legal Center.

Pennsylvania

• Eliminate the permanent early voter list, requiring voters to submit a separate application for each election, rather than submitting one application for the entire election cycle.

• Prohibit the use of ballot drop boxes, eliminating a safe and secure option for voters to ensure that their mail ballots are returned directly to election officials on time.

• Increase poll watcher access to absentee ballot processing and canvassing activities (which are already publicly observable), allowing poll watchers to more easily harass election officials and volunteers and reducing limitations that keep our election officials safe while maintaining transparency.

• Prohibit counties from notifying voters about issues with absentee or mail ballots and providing voters an opportunity to fix those issues. Current Pennsylvania law allows, but does not require, counties to contact voters and give them a chance to fix issues with their ballots.

Campaign Legal Center writes that one legislator who sponsored an anti-voter bill said that his goal was “not to fix what happened but to restore integrity and trust” back into the voting process. That’s because these new voting restrictions wouldn’t “fix” anything—they only make voting harder for Pennsylvanians.

Geez, these anti-voter measures are created by legislators have a serious mean streak running through them, you think?!

To my mind, conservative lawmakers don’t have any ideas that can benefit ALL citizens. I mean, why the insane focus on restrictive voting measures – especially when these lawmakers lose the White House and collectively lose their seats in Congress and throughout state legislatures?

You must have a pretty sorry platform, if you have one at all, to be so paranoid as to make it hard for people to vote – people who you think will likely not vote for you! People who include minorities, women, students, those low on the socio-economic ladder who may not vote for you due to your record of misogynistic laws against women’s health care, tax cuts for the uber-wealthy, cutting of social programs that address mental health, health care access, education, job training, and yes, restrictive voter suppression laws.

I find voter suppression laws disgusting. The very thought of them makes my blood boil. Voter suppression laws demonstrate a cynical and contemptuous regard for people.

Hey, anti-voter legislators and supporters:

You don’t like democracy?

You dig authoritarianism? There’s plenty of authoritarian regimes around the globe you can try! Why not try Russia? China? Brazil? Iran? Saudi Arabia? I’d venture to say there’s plenty of people in those countries who would LOVE to swap places with you! If you don’t like democracy here, then get the fuck out of here.

Take your authoritarian tendencies to the lands of Vladimir Putin, Xi Xinping, or any of the other countries led by dictators drunk on power – those who want to rule til their last breath. Go find out how beautiful life in an authoritarian country really is! You respect strongmen, don’t you? There’s plenty of strongmen to spare around the globe who cannot handle the slightest bit of criticism, and who cannot handle the idea of everyone having a voice. Go live with them! But do not shove authoritarianism down America’s throat – not least of all by severely restricting Americans’ vote.

You’re such sore losers! You lose an election, then you immediately scream FRAUD!

Why don’t you come up with ideas to empower every American to thrive instead of resorting to restricting voter participation?

If you really “love” America and want to “fix” voting problems (and they do exist), why not urge Congress to pass the For The People Act, H.R.1/S.1 and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, H.R. 4?

The For The People Act sets national minimum standards for our elections based on bipartisan best practices, ensuring that Americans’ ability to access the ballot isn’t dependent on which state they live in, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would revitalize the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to defend against racial discrimination in our elections.

Instead of trying to spread disinformation and making American lives harder through stupid voter suppression laws that threaten our democracy, support the Congressional acts listed above…dig yourself out of a dark, insidious, anti-voter hole!

Just sayin’.

* note: according to a campaign email.

Sources

Common Cause Maryland
Alternet.org
Campaign Legal Center
Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law
Salon
ABC News
CBS News – 60 Minutes
LA Times
PBS News Hour
Fox13 News
Mother Jones
CNN
Salon
Campaign Legal Center
Congress.gov
Campaign Legal Center – The Bipartisan Origins &Impact of the For the People Act (H.R. 1/S. 1)
Human Rights Campaign
Wikipedia