ATTACKING OUR RIGHT TO VOTE

By Michael Connelly

The right to vote is perhaps the most cherished and important of the rights guaranteed to Americans by the Constitution. Without the right to vote we literally have no way to control the Federal government and keep it from taking away our other rights. Yet, it is precisely because of that fact that the so-called progressives in this country are now trying to severely limit the right to vote, and unfortunately the efforts are coming at us from all three branches of government. We can also expect them to intensify as the November elections grow closer.
First, we have the attack by the Congress on the 1st Amendment right of all businesses and groups to participate in the election process. This came in the form of the Disclose Act, which thanks to the efforts of my you and many other Americans has at least temporarily stalled in the Senate after passing the House of Representatives.
Then, we have the blatant actions of Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice (DOJ) in making a decision to drop the civil suits against members of the Black Panther Party who were videoed during the 2008 election intimidating white voters in Philadelphia. According to J. Christian Adams, a former DOJ attorney, he and his colleagues were informed that the office would not prosecute any minorities for voter intimidation, but would only prosecute whites who intimidated minority voters.
Apparently, that was only the beginning. Historically, members of the military and their families have voted overwhelmingly for conservative political candidates who support the values that the troops are fighting for. This has always been an irritant to the left so there have been increasing efforts by the progressives in some states to derive ways to keep absentee votes from the military from being counted. These tactics have primarily involved waiting so late to send out the ballots to the troops that it would be virtually impossible for them to return them by the election deadline.
In October of 2009 President Obama signed into law a bill introduced by Senator John Cornyn (R. TX) that required the Secretaries of State in each state to mail out absentee ballots to military personnel no later than 45 days prior to the election. This could only be avoided by the Secretary of State getting a waiver because of something unforeseen happening that would prevent the ballots from going out on time.
It sounds great doesn’t it? A left wing controlled Congress passing such legislation and Obama actually signing it. Yet, now it has been learned by the few members of the media who will report on this that at a recent meeting between DOJ officials and the Secretaries of State of various state governments, the DOJ told them not to worry about getting waivers or complying with the law. They were told that the Department of Justice had no intention of enforcing it. In other words, the whole thing was a ruse. The Executive Branch of government has no interest in protecting the right to vote of the men and women fighting for and dying for us overseas.
So, as you can see there is two pronged attack on the right to vote coming from Congress and the White House. First, Congress will do everything it can to limit the free speech efforts by people who disagree with this administration from influencing the election. Secondly, the DOJ has virtually declared an open season during the 2010 election for groups supporting the left to do what is necessary to intimidate voters who might oppose the progressive agenda. At the same time, the DOJ will do its part to help eliminate from consideration votes coming from our heroes overseas in the war.
As unbelievable as all of this is, it gets worse when you look at what has being done by the third branch of government, the Judicial Branch. Certain far left Federal Judges who have their own political agendas have decided to adopt the approach that if you don’t vote for the things I support, you vote won’t count. This has clearly been the case in the recent rulings on the Arizona Immigration Law and the California Marriage Law.
In both of these cases we have the voters of a sovereign state passing legislation that applies only to their states. Yet, because the progressives don’t like these laws they are essentially telling the citizens of these states that you no longer have the right to vote. Do not let yourself be fooled by the decisions that these two pieces of legislation were unconstitutional. Nothing in the Constitution of the United States prohibits the State of Arizona from passing a law allowing its police officers to enforce an already existing Federal law.
In addition, there is nothing at all in the Constitution dealing with marriage whether heterosexual or otherwise. Therefore the states have this power under the specific provisions of the Tenth Amendment that says:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
That is very clear. Whether you agree or disagree with the prohibition of gay marriage by the people of the State of California the fact is that the decision is up to them and when a Federal judge takes that power away from the people, they are being denied their right to vote. That, by the way, is a right clearly granted to the people by the Constitution and can’t be legally taken away by any branch of the Federal Government.
Michael Connelly
http://michaelconnelly.viviti.com/
mrobertc@hotmail.com