Republicans Trample Our Voting Rights

The temperature in Baghdad, Iraq on the morning of March 10, 2010 was approaching a humid 80 Degrees by 11:00 AM.  On the surface this appeared to be just another hot, sandy day in this war torn nation, but today would be different.

American troops were on high alert but determined to see the important events of this day carried through. This day was important because it was Election Day in Iraq and there were hopes that democracy would endure and the turnout would be high.

It is altogether fitting and proper that it would be American Troops that shielded the Iraqis as they exercised their right to vote, because in the United States the right to vote is conceived in the proposition that all men are created equal. The struggle to secure for our citizens their right to vote is a fundamental element of our history, from the Women’s Suffrage Convention at Seneca Falls, to the passing of the 15^th Amendment declaring that citizens cannot be denied the right to vote based on race or color, to the 19^th Amendment guaranteeing women’s right to vote; we treat the right to vote as sacred to our democracy.

At this very moment, the right to vote is again tested, not on the streets of Baghdad but rather right here in America. In the months before the 2012 presidential election, Republican legislatures and governors across the country are rewriting voting laws to make it much harder for the young,  the old, and the poor– groups that typically vote Democratic- to cast a ballot. [1]

Former President Clinton has warned that the likes of these Republican attacks on voting rights in Pennsylvania and Ohio had not been seen since we got rid of the poll tax and other Jim Crow burdens on voting. At the Democratic National Convention President Clinton said, “Do you really want to live in a country where one party is so desperate to win the White House that they go around trying to make it harder for people to vote if they’re people of color, poor people or first generation immigrants?”[2]

In 2010 the Iraqis defied a barrage of mortars and rockets and went to the polls in large numbers. In 2012, despite the Republican attempts to suppress our voting rights, we must defy the Republicans and go to the polls in large numbers to ensure that a nation conceived in liberty will endure.

[1]The New
York Times/Editorial/The Republican Threat to Voting/Published: April 27, 2011/pageA26

[2] http://www.thenation.com/blog/169733/bill-clinton-gop-voter-suppression-laws-sign-desperation