Mar 15 2007
Voting Is Not a Right
You gotta love Cathy McMorris, Washington’s Fifth District represenative to Congress. She’s a staunch supporter of torture, claiming (against all evidence to the contrary) that it’s a reliable means of intelligence gathering. (Even the Israelis say torture is useless, but don’t tell Cathy that.) Now she’s written to tell me that ” the right to vote is not an inalienable right, however, and is contingent upon esteeming the rights of others. In committing a felony, a criminal infringes and threatens the rights of fellow citizens. As a consequence, the laws of Washington State are enforced to suspend certain rights of felons, including the right to vote.” Somebody needs to teach this woman to read–read the Constitution, that is. Especially since in the paragraph before she (or her PR flack, who obviously doesn’t know a contradiction from a hole in the wall) writes, “The most fundamental and essential aspect of a democratic society is the right to vote.” Not only is McMorris torture-loving rights revoker, but she’s deceptive as well. In her letter to me, she says that the reason voting rights must be revoked is because restitution must be made when “significant property damage has been done.” Hmmmm… The U.S. has one of the highest incarceration rates on the planet, but we don’t jail many people for violent crime or doing damage to property. (Unless you’re an enviromentalist, that is.) No: most citizens sitting in prison are there because they got busted for pot or acid or, in other words, for committing victimless crimes. (Remember folks, your texes are being wasted not only on a futile war in Iraq but on an equally futile war on drugs.) McMorris’s letter (ugly boilerplate and all) came in response to one of my own (of course) in which I voiced my support for H.R. 939, which would have amended the Help America Vote Act of 2002, and would among other things require that states restore the voting rights of individuals who have committed felonies unless they are: 1) incarcerated, or 2) on probation or parole for having committed a felony. It would also require states to notify felons upon restoration of their rights. She what’s McMorris’s beef? As long as you’re locked up or under court-ordered supervision, you don’t get to vote, and that’s exactly the position McMorris states to me in her letter. Her problem is that unless you’re white (the majority of felons in the U.S. are, alas, black, because we’re a vicious bunch of racists in the land of the free) and middle class, you’re rights are expendable.
