Dusting off the blog

I've been spending too much time on other online communication sites lately. Twitter, Facebook, Google+, they all serve their place. Where they fail is in substance. It's all immediate blips of information that almost encourage you to have a short attention span. Sometimes, I need more than a quick post. Today is one of those days.

If you know me, you know that politics is one of my passions. I love to follow it, and I love to talk about it, with everyone. I don't care if you're a crazy militia man or a pot smoking hippie, I want to hear your opinion. This, to me, is one of the most critical things we can do to sustain this country - talk to each other, ESPECIALLY when we disagree. You won't always change my mind, and I won't always change yours, that's not the point. The point is to hear as many perspectives as you can, and together with you own knowledge and values, form an informed opinion. On what? Anything. Everything. I am genuinely astonished to think that anyone, anywhere would NOT take this approach, but I've come to accept that this is the case. So be it. This is one quest I will not abandon.

The other most critical thing, is to vote. You must vote. It is your right and your duty as a US citizen (or wherever you live, hopefully a democracy :-). For me, not voting is beyond lazy, it's shameful. It's like looking a fallen war hero in the eye and saying "I don't care that you died for my freedom." I really do take it that seriously. It's why I also think it's important to convey to others the importance of voting. It's typically not convenient. Often times the candidates suck. Deal with it. Get to the polls and vote, or else shut your trap about politics for the next year and take whatever they dish out.

This brings me to what's compelling me to stay up past my old-man bedtime and write a blog post today. Challenges to voting are once again in the news. 14 States have already passed laws that impact voting in the next election. 20 more are considering them. These laws relate to the ID you must present, the times you can vote, the ways in which you may conduct voter registration campaigns, the absentee voting process... pretty much everything related to voting. But why? What problems are we having with our elections that these laws will fix? What cases of fraud have we seen lately? None.

How many people does this affect? Why should I care? The sheer number of voters who could be impacted is larger than the margin of victory in two of the last three presidential elections - 5 Million people. This has been well documented by Rolling Stone, the non-partisan Brennan Center at New York University, and others. 38 States in total are considering changes. States that have already passed new voting laws? Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas... notice a trend? These states all had poll taxes to suppress the black vote, they're all in the South (sorry Texas), and they are all run by Republicans. Thankfully, because of their history of discrimination at the polls, these states (except Tennessee) must all get their shiny new laws approved by the Department of Justice, thanks to the voting rights act.

But what's the real issue here? Why all the new rules and regulations around voting? Which of these laws is tied to a specific problem, and will it fix that problem? Here are some facts:

Among voting-age US citizens, 25% of blacks, 18% of the elderly, and 16% of hispanics do not have access to the documentation needed to prove citizenship. This is compared to 8% of whites. Why not? An easy example is a man born in the hills of Kentucky, in a cabin, who has no birth certificate. Newsflash: except for the elderly, the top two groups here vote Democrat. Is it a coincidence that Republican legislatures are passing laws that will disproportionately limit Democratic turnout at the polls? Absolutely. Republicans wouldn't do that on purpose, that would be like cheating.

We all agree that only citizens can vote. For 240 years, that has not been a problem, why do we need these laws now? The ID laws have provisions for the people who do not have a driver's license or other acceptable document today. They can go to the bureau of motor vehicles and get a voter ID card for free.. if they can get there and take a day off work to wait in line. Are non-citizens voting? Is this a big problem that new/stricter ID requirements will address? If only someone had looked into the issue, someone we could trust.

Thank God for "W." He instructed his Justice Department to investigate voter fraud, and they did. They spent 5 years looking into it. They found, brace yourself, 86 cases. That's nationwide, after investigating it for 5 years, with all the resources available to the justice department. Were any of these cases citizenship issues, you might wonder? Yes, 2 of them. A man from Pakistan filled out the wrong form. He has since been deported. A man from Mexico who had applied for citizenship thought that entitled him to vote, so he registered and voted. He has also been deported. So the two actual citizenship cases the DOJ found are no longer an issue.

Around 5-10 years ago, sex offenders were a favorite target of politicians. Don't get me wrong, they're scum, but hear me out on this. If a politician wanted to look tough on crime, he'd propose some new over-the-top sex offender law. No one would oppose it, because they'd look terrible. The problem with this is we now have some sex offender laws on the books that are too broad and have REALLY BAD unintended consequences. This guy had consensual sex with his high school girlfriend, but he was 19, she was 16, and her mom was pissed so she called the cops. Now he has to register for life, for sleeping with the woman who became his wife. He also can't vote, because he's a convicted felon!

There are many stories like this. The problem is that politicians have removed the will of the people from what they do. They are passing laws to make themselves look good, and asking their constituents to "trust me, this is in your best interest." No citizen ever said "I think high school sweethearts should be classified as sex offenders," but that's what happened.

Now that every state has 10 different sex offender laws on the books, it's time to go after the "illegals." Can't go wrong there, right? It just sounds great. "We need to crack down on illegals! They're taking our jobs, and free loading on our education and health-care systems! Let's make them scapegoats for America's problems." Off we go! Immigration "reform" has been a hot topic for years. Yes, the Federal government has failed to address it. Here's another newsflash though - these people are paranoid about getting caught, and rightfully so. I don't support people coming here illegally. What we're seeing though is that they are afraid to report even basic crimes because they're afraid of deportation. They are more likely to be victims of robberies because they deal exclusively in cash - can't open a bank account and don't trust them. Their women don't report domestic violence for fear of deportation. This is un-American. Some of these new immigration laws, like the one that just went live in Alabama, target the children of illegals. They require schools to verify citizenship.

These people run our restaurants, hotels, farms - ask anyone in those industries. Some are illegal, but some are US citizens. They do jobs that lazy Americans are too lazy to do, or at least they're willing to do them cheaper than we are. Have you spoken with a high school kid lately? That's who used to run the McDonalds, and in rural white towns they still do. Show me a city of any size, and I'll show you dozen restaurants that would close without Hispanic staff. In Kentucky, we would not have a horse industry without them.

These new voting and immigration laws target Hispanics because it's popular with the Republican base. The voting laws will inadvertently affect blacks even more though. Either way, we are not a nation of xenophobes, and we need to stop acting like one. Massachusetts changed its voting laws a while back, because it wanted to silence the votes of immigrants. The year was 1857, and they were targeting the Irish, with a literacy test. Connecticut followed suit two years later. Let's not do that again.