It is instructive the large number of Election Reform bits of legislation being brought before State legislatures controlled by Republicans across these United States.
As far as I can assess, all of the Bills are being presented as necessary reforms or the updating of outdated voter qualifications. But are we being sold a Bill of Goods here?
In order to help you put things into better context, let me cite a couple of historical events. In the Roman Empire so many hundreds of years ago, the prized and privileged title was that of citizen. This appellation with its full right to participate in the affairs of state was not granted to people from captive countries, or former slaves, or the lowly born in many instances. The Roman policy was open and freely known. Citizen was reserved for a presumably most worthy group.
The practice of exclusivity of citizenship still exists today in the Bahamas. To be born in the Bahamas of non-Bahamian parents would not automatically qualify you for Bahamian citizenship. Maybe the laws in the Bahamas have recently changed, but I am not aware of it. For whatever reason, the Bahamas government was very zealous of its citizenship rights and guarded them closely. Haitians, Jamaicans, and other Caribbean islanders felt differently about Bahamas citizenship policies.
Republicans in the USA have an agenda that they are not brave enough to reveal to the public at this time. What does this plethora of legislation, basically voter restriction really mean? Could it mean that by making it more difficult for the poor and less mobile to get to the polls, the Republicans will increase their electoral competitiveness?
I was born in a Country that up to 1944 reserved the vote for men with a stipulated level of income, or property, and where men could vote in every constituency in which they had property. There was also an unusual hybrid called a Plump Vote, double the value of a split vote.
The public will hardly ever be told by the state the extent of hidden agendas. We have to sniff them out ourselves. Who benefits from restricted population growth, increased qualifications to vote, who benefits from racial immigration quotas, who benefits from gerrymandering policies at any given time, who is fearful of lessened privilege, who wants to keep things as they are, or maybe even turn back the clock.
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