The Urge To Purge

I voted last week. There were problems. Tater Cat kept stretching out on the Voter's Pamphlet, and I got so caught up trying to figure out one of the ballot measures that I overcooked my oatmeal. Other than that, things went smoothly.  The Voter's Pamphlet came through the mail slot a couple weeks ago and a few days later the ballots shot through too. If I could rig up the mail slot so they'd land in my lap it would be even better.

It takes me a few days to study the ballot, on account of having to attend to the oatmeal and the litter box and whatnot, but I've got plenty of time. And it's a good thing, too. I remember those awful days when we'd trudge through the rain to the polling place and the nice neighbor lady would hand us our ballots and we'd pull the curtains behind us and vote. They were tiny curtains, gave you standard hospital-gown coverage. The ballot always seemed to have a few surprises I wasn't prepared for and that took some time. And then there'd be some initiative that would be described like this:

"The result of a NO vote is to maintain the repeal of the prohibition of the anti-inflammatory annulment revision ban." This kind of thing takes a lot of study. You have to start at the end and work backwards, and you don't always have enough fingers. Filling in the bubble at that point is like snipping the last wire on an explosive device. One wrong move and you might have agreed to donate a kidney to a Republican. It's best done from an easy chair, next to a cat with extra toes.

So I'm certainly glad we switched over to this nice, 100% paper ballot unhackable home voting system. I'm sure the rest of you are satisfied too.

What? You still go to the polls? You stand in line for hours? Sometimes you discover you're not on the rolls anymore? Your chads are still hanging under that curtain? There's no paper trail? You can't vote if your address is a post office box? You need your birth certificate, a note from your mommy, and an 8x10 color glossy? What kind of a stupid system is that?

Well, color me horrified. Except in Georgia, where it would be in my best interest not to color me at all, lest I get purged. There's a nice black woman running for governor there and it even looks like she has a good chance unless something can be done about it. Fortunately, the white dude she's running against is the Secretary of State in charge of elections, so something is.

I do read these comment threads full of Republican apologists. I have to, otherwise I might be able to sleep through the night. So I know what the problem is. There are lots and lots of people out there who can't even be bothered to get a proper driver's license with a photo I.D. to show to the poll people, so they shouldn't be allowed to vote. If you're that lazy, you shouldn't vote.

Uh. The lazy ones don't vote, so I'm not sure what the problem is.

Oh! And then there are all those people still on the voting rolls who are technically dead. That's a travesty. Thousands! We must purge the rolls of dead people.

Uh. Dead people vote even less often than lazy people. If you think you see a bunch of raggedy dead people lurching toward the polling booth, they're probably just homeless. They should vote too--they probably have opinions and life experiences that we need to hear about.

In general, Democrats think people who want to vote should be able to vote, whereas Republicans think people who want to vote Republican should be able to vote. Personally, I think felons should be able to vote. Why not? I understand people think voting is a privilege, but isn't it a privilege of citizenship? Are felons not citizens?

Ah. Citizens. There's the real problem: all those immigrants coming in to vote in our elections. They won't call the cops if there's trouble in the neighborhood, lest they be swept into detention on mistaken identity, but they're lining up in droves to cast illegal ballots. It's a risk for sure, so the only possible explanation for this is they're getting paid by George Soros. We already know they'll do anything for a little bit of money. They'll even pick radishes and dismember chickens and stuff. So. Ipso whacko, they're on the take.

Well, clearly, some restrictions are necessary. We can't just have people expressing their democratic wishes willy-nilly. There should be hoops to jump through. Hoops! That's it!

Let's make everybody shoot foul shots for ballots! Or, alternately, let's make everyone pass a basic civics test--ask a newly naturalized citizen if you need help. Or let's wipe out the lazy contingent altogether by requiring everyone to walk a thousand miles through the desert. That, there, shows fortitude.

Independence Day Special

As I understand it, Mitch McConnell and his wrecking crew not only held up Obama's choice for Supreme Court, but did the same for hundreds of other vacancies in the judiciary, so that by the time their biddable bag of meat acquired the Presidency, he could pack the courts with young conservatives who might be expected to steer the country hard to the right for many decades.

Which is awesome if you happen to believe that abortion is the most important moral question we face. It's an answer to prayer. To the Republican majority and the billionaires who underwrite them it is less a matter of God's will than the culmination of a long-term strategy designed to gain and maintain power. It's one element in a campaign that also includes gerrymandering, voter suppression, union-busting, propaganda, and flat-out cheating.

There are a number of reasons I believe abortion should be legal, reasons having to do with coercion and control, and the mysteries of the soul, and the pragmatic consideration that more abortions can be prevented by access to free birth control than by criminalization, and a bias in favor of women's health and autonomy over fetal rights, but it's not something I intend to argue about with people who describe themselves as pro-life.

Suffice it to say fetal success is not at the top of my list of concerns. Not above civil rights for the born; not above the destruction of the particular climate that has sustained us and other life forms; not above the demonization and marginalization of entire groups of people, by race or faith or country of origin, which precedes and condones their elimination; not above the lust for war, which precisely tracks the lust for money. So much. So much I care about.

So many of us do. Enough to march. Lawsy, wasn't that a march! That sea of pink hats! There are more of us than there are of them. How did it all go so wrong?

Let's go back to the anti-abortion folks. Sure, they're just one element of a constituency that includes nervous gun owners and xenophobes and outright racists--there's some intersectionality involved here--but let's look just at them.

These people care. They really care. They care enough to vote, and they vote every chance they get. They put their people on the school board. They elect judges. They elect their city council. They scrutinize every ballot to reward the stance they favor. They're in a minority, but they win. Because they vote.

Is there anything we care enough about to do that? To vote?

Peace? Justice? Sustainable energy and economy? Shared prosperity? Do we care about extinction? The collapse of the oceans? Refugees? Poverty? Do black lives matter to us, at all? Do we assume our own version of righteousness should prevail on its merits, without us having to bother to vote for it?

How would this world be different if Al Gore had had enough extra votes that the Supreme Court would have been ashamed to hand the election to Dick Cheney? Would climate deniers have dominated the Cabinet? Would we still be mired in a fossil-fuel economy? Would we be at war in the Middle East? Did we really think Hillary and Donald were equally bad choices? Really? I guess so. Enough of us stayed home pouting. Waiting for that gorgeous candidate, so we could rest easy, put a LOVE sign on our lawn, and go back to our oblivious daily lives. We didn't care enough.

We care enough to march. We care enough to write checks and make calls. We can start caring enough to vote, every election, every chance we get. Or we can start knitting pink handbaskets.