This is gross.
I'm sad and desperately angry.
Saturday, Rick and I were winterizing the front yard when we were approached by two different Get Out the Vote pollsters. The first simply made sure we were going to vote, checked first to see if we'd already voted, and ascertained that we knew our voting location. He was also campaigning for Obama, and since we are sporting an Obama-Biden yard sign attached to our porch railing, that was pretty straight-forward.
The second pollster checked our names against the "registered voters" list she was carrying. Rick was there. A woman who hasn't lived in our house since before us is there. I'M NOT.
I'm not on the voter rolls.
There were no answers available from the poll worker.
I can vote tomorrow by provisional ballot. It will not be counted until the second count of the votes, the count which certifies the count according to the Constitution, and even then it may not count.
I am furious.
What makes it worse is that I suspect that it is because of my last name.
During the last presidential election there were a large number of voters removed from the rolls, ostensibly because they were "redundant" or "non-voting" or "believed deceased" or other lame excuses. Almost all of the names happened to be Hispanic-Latino names. One of the names removed was my husband Rick's name.
Rick is not Hispanic. Rick is not Latino. Rick is a mix -- a beautifully American mix -- of mixed European heritage on his mother's side and Filippino on his father's side. Filippino is not Hispanic or Latino. The Republic of Philippines is in Asia. If he can extract anything separately from that already honorable heritage, it would be a mix of very far-back Chinese and indigenous Island tribes.
So this year, aparently, it's MY turn.
I'm not Hispanic or Latino, either. My background is a Euro-mix, mostly British with a good dose of Swedish. But here's the thing. It shouldn't matter what a person's heritage is when covered by the curtain of the voting booth. It's supposed to be anonymous, anyway, right?
I suppose I should take comfort in the obvious fact that they didn't track me down to look at me to verify my ethnic status before eliminating me from the voting rolls. Anyone reading this who hasn't met me in person, you should know that I have strawberry blond hair, hazel eyes leaning toward green, and pinkish skin that burns severely in the sun, the sorts of traits that make strangers comment on my Irishness near St. Patrick's Day and Scottishness near Bobby Burns' Birthday or quote
Braveheart to me.
Still,
no one should be denied their right to vote based on their ethnic heritage. Not me. Not my husband. Not countless others that I don't know that have also been denied, that have surnames similar to mine.
Blind bureacrats desperate for power don't care about any of that. Nor do they care about justice. Because if they did, they wouldn't be tampering with the consititutional rights of citizens of this country at election time.
On the other hand, the current president and his administration have treated the Constitution like a bathmat. So there's really no big surprise there, right?
All the more reason for the current administration to be eliminated as fully as possible; so now, more than ever, I hope like screaming heck our next president will be Barack Obama. We need someone we can trust.
Until such a time as we get a trustworthy leader (it won't be John McCain, that lying, cutthroat, trash-talking jerk!!), this is not the America I know.
Labels: autumn, current events, Grr Arrgh, NaBloPoMo, perspective, rants, small world, social justice, values, voting
