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Voting

I voted in the primary this morning. There were a couple of choices to be made but in most of the races I knew who I wanted based on prior knowledge of the candidates.

I had to show a photo ID to vote because of an election law. I have a photo ID because I am plugged into the mainstream; I have a driver's license. Many of the older residents of my state who might wish to vote do not. There are alternative ID's that are accepted and in different states there are filters in place; hunting licenses are good in Texas but not college ID's. To my knowledge no one from any government office is providing transport for the elderly to get them or offering to pay for the ID, which is a filter on folk who aren't very visible to the mainstream.

One thing history has taught us is that when we increase the number of citizens who can vote politicians act differently. When only propertied white men could vote, government did not work very well for sharecroppers. When only men could vote government treated women as bound by limits that we know don't exist; the mainstream knows this now but it wasn't so self-evident before women's suffrage.

Government changed in many states that had put strong and violent filters in place to keep people of color from voting; government actually started caring for them as well as majority citizens, until the current Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act and many southern states put filters back in place.

The history of this is pretty clear, and white supremacists in and out of the government try to keep that history from being discussed openly. It's not subtle and the majority often just doesn't care enough to point out the deceit. It is one of the things that undermines our national security, denying the fruits of citizenship from many of our citizens. Inequity is weakness as we compete with other nations. 

Now our current president, who seems to cheat as a way of life in every context, talks of his party seizing control of the elections (the blatant cheating of tyrants around the world) and requiring passports to vote (the lesser discussed cheating of only having the affluent vote, for by and large poorer folk have no passports and the government is not working to provide them for free).

Voting matters. Politicians care who votes and how they vote, and corrupt ones try to pick their voters. Gerrymandering is only one way that this occurs.

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