I worked yesterday to get out the vote. I called registered voters, Democratic, Republican, Independent / Undecided /non-aligned voters, and I made sure they knew where there polling places were.
I spoke for hours with people about voting issues, including explaining that a no vote on the amendments would stop the amendments and that a yes vote would put them in the constitution.
Where people had questions, I had my computer plugged in, so as to be able to refer them to candidate web sites - all the candidates, and to be able to refer them to independent, non-partisan web sites for fact checking as well, on the major points of contention, so that no one had to take my word alone for any information.
It is a source of pride to me that Minnesota consistently has one of THE highest voter turnouts, but we are still lower than many other countries.
It is having access to ballots and the voting process, not guns and bullets, that make us free as a nation.
It shames me, it shames the state, and it is a stain on conservatives on a par with the racist attacks on black people under Jim Crow laws with axe handles and police dogs and fire hoses when I see what has happened with attempted voter suppression in states like Ohio and Florida under right wing legislatures and governors this election cycle.
Those conservatives, those UNAMERICAN Tea Partiers, have tried to prevent people from voting AGAIN. Right wingers, who are fond of patting themselves on the back for their patriotism, who love to wrap themselves in the flag as they do the most UnAmerican things to the country, who talk about taking back the country for themselves, by which they mean taking the country away from OTHER AMERICANS, Americans who are NOT corporations. These right wingers do not want a country where there is one vote for each eligible person, these right wingers are trying to disenfranchise anyone who is not also a right winger, which mostly means an old white badly educated American.
The more people turn out to vote, the more elections TEND to go for Democrats. So Republicans have tried to stop people from voting. That's why you see the following video clips below about voters waiting in line for 6 an 8 and 10 hours, in notoriously voter suppressing states like Ohio and Florida.
If this was anywhere else in the world, we would be calling it what it is - voter suppression, an attempt to rig elections. If this was the Soviet Union, or an Asian country, a middle-Eastern country, an African country, a South American country or a Caribbean country, we would be pointing to it as an example of being corrupt and primitive if they did the things the right has done in their elections.
These efforts to keep people from voting for Democratic candidates up and down the ballot are wrong.
These efforts to keep people from voting for Democratic candidates up and down the ballot are cowardly.
These people are NOT patriots, they are UNAMERICAN, and they are evil, small minded and corrupt.
They are the tea party and they are the GOP. They commit election tampering. They are immoral and unethical, pathetic human beings.
While they may lack the capacity to be ashamed, they are leaving a further legacy that is a stain on themselves and a stain on our history that will not do well under the test of time. They are once again on the wrong side of history. Shame on them.
I am impressed with those who stood in line for hours on end. THOSE people are real Americans.
If they can stand in line for hours on end, I can damn well do my best to get out the vote again today.
I will be delighted, if a bit overwhelmed, if as an election judge on Tuesday, we have a crowded polling place. I will be doing my level best every minute of that election to facilitate voting for every person who is eligible to vote, regardless of party affiliation, UNLIKE THOSE Republicans in Florida and Ohio, and the Tea Party and the MN GOP in our legislature who want to make it harder for people to vote here. It will be my way of pushing back against the dirty right. They want to make it harder to vote in Minnesota, too. They want to make it harder for people of color, for students, for the elderly, and for people serving in our military to vote. They want to end same day voter registration as we know it, with provisional ballots which are unlikely to be counted, given the patterns of other states' elections. The right wants to harm this country by abandoning the core principles of one person / one vote, 'for our own good', because they don't REALLY believe in democracy or freedom or patriotism, they just give it empty lip service.
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