Novermber 6th is the day that all Republicans, Democrats, Green Partiers, Socialists and Independents become small "d" democrats, who, by exercising their right to vote, have a say in the future direction of our democracy. When billions of souls around the globe live in tyranny with little or no freedom, one would surmise that the turn out here would approach 100%. Alas, only 61.6% of eligible voters exercised that right in 2008. The 38.4% who didn't amounted to 82,000,000 people. As bad as that number is, an estimated 90,000,000 will skip the polls in this presidential election.
Alas, some millions of those 90 million will result from the most disturbing development in the 2012 election: state voter suppression laws. During the past two years many states passed measures to make it harder for Americans, particularly African-Americans, students, the elderly and disabled folks to exercise their fundamental right to vote. These measures include requirements to show a government issued photo ID, documentary proof of citizenship, shortened early voting time frames, repealing of Election Day registration laws, and making it more difficult for third party organizations to register voters. All these anti democratic actions have been dubbed laws in search of a problem as voter fraud is virtually non-existent. In fact, these measure themselves are the only voter fraud we should be concerned about.
Every one of us who cherishes our democracy should not only vote, we should rise up against each and every attempt to create a 21st century version of the poll tax and Jim Crow voting restrictions. The legislators who promote them trample upon and diminish our 236 year old noble experiment that all the people, not the powerful elites, rule our democracy
