So, yeah, I'm a liberal. BUT WHAT KIND? We libs have all kinds of hot-button issues, ranging from protecting the environment to occupying Wall Street. Where do I fall in the left-wing spectrum?
Well there's a quiz out there on the internets that informed me, and I have to agree. (There's a quiz out there on the internets for just about anything, right?)
My Liberal Identity
You are a Social Justice Crusader, also known as a rights activist. You believe in equality, fairness, and preventing neo-Confederate conservative troglodytes from rolling back fifty years of civil rights gains.
Take the quiz at
About.com Political Humor
About.com Political Humor
It's just a silly little quiz, but I feel good about the results. I'd love to know our civil rights are protected and inviolable, but you know what? They're not. Ask voters in North Carolina, Virginia and Florida. Ask African-Americans who are harassed by law enforcement while walking down a city street. Ask the lesbian who is refused employment because of her sexual orientation and refused a marriage license to boot.
Ask working women, who still make 77¢ for every dollar earned by a male counterpart. Why in the HELL haven't we passed the Equal Rights Amendment yet in the United States?
We've got work to do, people! Those neo-Confederates aren't going away any time soon. But we can fire their leaders next time we vote. The right to vote isn't guaranteed to everyone who walks into a polling place. We've been fighting for and about the right to cast a ballot since the country was born.
Here's what I know: The right to vote is worth the fight. It's the most powerful voice we have in this pseudo-Democracy. Sometimes the votes don't count (cough, Bush v. Gore, cough). Sometimes they count A LOT (Obama 2008, Obama 2012).
If your state is throwing up roadblocks to prevent you from voting, pay attention! Learn what you need to do in order to exercise your right. Do you have to show an ID, even though you've never had to before? Show it and then vote against the party that changed the rule.
Virginia recently purged 40,000 voters' names. Do you know if you're one of them? You elect a governor in less than two weeks. Find out what you need to do and do it. North Carolina's Buncombe County GOP chairman resigned after admitting on national television that the new voter restrictions in his state were designed to make it more difficult for Democrats to vote. (His remarks were astonishingly racist and candid, as if he just really didn't care about exposing himself as a bigot.)
The bottom line? Vote. (Or, as we jokingly say around here, vote early and often!)
And my preference, of course, is that you vote for Democrats.
1 comment:
In PA, they are running ads saying that you'll be asked to show ID when you vote, but it's your choice whether or not you provide it. An article in the paper recently indicated the amount of $$ being spent on these ads and it is, of course, in the millions.
If you don't have to show ID, what's the point of asking for it? But because I find the whole thing so ridiculous, my intention is to decline to show any and see what happens, especially because they've made such a big deal about it not being required. But I do wonder whether there will be polling places where they don't give people the option to decline and where people will be turned away.
I have to say, this is one law where I'm on the fence though. I think it makes a lot of sense to require ID to vote in order to cut down on any voter fraud. It's hard to believe people can go through life without valid ID's. And, it's hard for me to believe that a lot of people who don't have ID's are likely to get out to vote. There needs to be the same kind of movement to "Get your ID" that there is to "Get out the Vote."
But maybe I'm not fully informed on how widespread this problem really is. I can see that the people most likely not to have ID would be the low-income and that those people would skew towards being Democratic, though.
And, it's hard for me to imagine a lot of widespread voter fraud that is based on people going in and voting under someone else's name - you would have to know where the person votes and that they aren't going to vote, so it seems complicated. It seems like voter fraud would be much more likely to take the form of some kind of computer hacking, but maybe I'm naive about the possibilities.
Anyway, I'll report back what happens when I refuse ID!
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