#644 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #61. The Personal Suicidal Decision of "Me" "Now" on the Voter Suppression Amendment.

(click to enlarge)

Nov. 3, 2012 Woodbury MN


Playing frequently the last few days has been a 30 second commercial featuring seven supposed Minnesotans*, a grizzled military veteran, a farmer, a young mother, a young African American, a construction worker, an apparent homemaker, an apparent young voter…all urging an affirmative vote on the Voter Suppression amendment Nov. 6.
How short-sighted these wholesome looking folks are, I think.
They are being played for fools.

The website for the ad says that the group sponsoring it is “the official ballot committee established to pass the Minnesota Voter ID Amendment. Our founders have been leading the charge for Voter ID in Minnesota for the past 4 years”. There is no “ID” at the website about who those “founders” might happen to be. Nothing.
This is how well-funded stealth campaigns go.
Trick people into making bad and irreversible decisions that are suicidal later.
The “Vote No” side on this voter suppression issue, “Our Vote, Our Future“, is very transparent.
The “vote yes” actors and actresses – each of them in the long run – has pretty high odds of being caught in the buzzsaw which they now want to construct and turn on.
Their own right to vote doesn’t seem in jeopardy now, but it won’t last. Something WILL happen that will nudge them off the voting rolls; something they do not at this moment anticipate will ever happen.
The odds of their disenfranchising themselves is off-the-charts higher than the odds of “cheating” or “fraud” by someone else.
Here’s a personal example of how this amendment will likely work for those who naively think “it won’t happen to me”:
November 6 is the 26th biennial general election in which I’ve been eligible to vote.
The first, in 1962, I was 22 and in the United States Army (back then, you had to be 21 to vote.)
Personally, I’ve lived the last twelve years at the same address; I’m an ordinary individual; I haven’t had to deal with unplanned things, like hospitalizations and the like, near the time of an election.
But as I recalled those 26 elections, and where I was, then, in eight of the twenty-six – almost a third – I might have found myself outside the door, or provisionally voting, and by mistake or frustration simply not completing my vote.
And during those years I was just an ordinary individual, healthy, working, moving from place to place, etc.
In those 26 years, I only lived in my home state (my birth certificate state) one year, and in that year, I had been back for only three months, still a non-resident.
It takes time, effort and money to get a certified copy of one’s birth certificate.
For 36 of the years I lived in only four towns; but I lived in five other places as well in other years.
I relocated as most anyone else would relocate: job, marriage, new home or apartment, etc.
Those who think that suppressing someone else’s voting privileges will not some day adversely affect them are fools.
Vote NO on the voter suppression amendment, November 6.

* – I choose not to identify this website. Any Minnesotan who sees the TV ad will see the disclaimer, and can easily find it on the internet.
For other Election 2012 posts, simply enter Election 2012 in the search box and click. A list of the others will come up.
Next post: the Marriage Amendment.

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