It's Official!

Taylor Swift has spoken. A few minutes after the presidential debate last week. the most famous diva of our time, the headliner of The Eras Tour, posted her endorsement of Harris for President. It included a picture of herself with a cat – The Childless Cat Lady. Thankfully, her tour doesn’t take her to Springfield, Ohio. J.D. Vance says cats and dogs don’t stand a chance in that town. Anyway, it’s official now. The candidates can begin the campaign.

Does Swift’s endorsement really have an effect on the electorate? That depends to whom you speak. She has 284 million followers on X. Four hundred thousand responded positively within one hour of her posting. The November vote count will tell us.

The debate was a runaway win for Harris, but Trump thought it was his best debate. One wonders if it will have any effect on the final vote count. It is possible both candidates made some inroads with the undecided voters of the country, although only a little movement, based on network interviews just after the debate. So why bother?

The 2020 election was decided by less than one hundred thousand votes. Some pundits suggest that it will be even closer this year. That means the election comes down to a few precincts in a few states. All of the polls are within the margin of error.

Pope Francis said recently that we should do two things – vote and vote for the candidate we think is the lesser of two evils. That doesn’t give a lot of people a lot of comfort. He spoke from the point of view of the leader of the world’s largest Christian denomination and as an Argentinian, which gives him a different perspective on U.S. politics. So what are we to do?

Most voters believe they have an easy decision; nearly fifty percent want Trump again and nearly fifty percent want Harris. Half of the voters will be disappointed with the results. The candidates represent two different views of America. One wants to go back to a time when rural life and conservative values permeated the nation; the other wants to move forward to a more perfect union. One has been remarkably successful as the stormtrooper for those who consider themselves the forgotten, the passed-over, the regular folks. The other is seen as the representative of the coastal elites. Two things are true about those thoughts: only 17 percent of the U.S. population live in non-urban areas so their needs are often forgotten or unrecognized by the 50 percent who live within fifty miles of the coasts and/or the 83 percent who live in urban areas.

So it is going to be a close call. The emotions are high. Because we are a democracy we are subjected to contrary views every day, and that is ok. What I don’t like is the obvious way in which many in the Republican Party are buying into the lies spewed by many of the former president’s surrogates and the conspiracy theories that abound. Millions are convinced that undocumented immigrants are voting in big numbers and they support new laws to keep them from voting. It is illegal in every state for a non-citizen to vote and there is no evidence of undocumented immigrants voting. Some states are creating new procedures for reviewing all votes before the results are certified based on lies about fake votes and illegal voters. It goes on.

The election should be about the character of the candidates. Trump doesn’t meet the high bar required of a president. He didn’t the first time and he doesn’t now. Did I mention that he was a convicted felon awaiting sentencing and trial for another 30-plus felony indictments?

The election should be about policies and programs. Trump’s former staff, hundreds of them, helped the Heritage Fund write Project 2025, a 900-page plan to tear down our democracy and replace it with a strong autocratic form of government. Trump has demonstrated his willingness to favor the rich over the poor in tax codes and safety-net programs. He doesn’t measure up to the needs of the nation.

The election should be about the Constitution. Trump said he would ignore the sacred document on his first day in office. He has said that he would use the military to quell protests, which is against the law. He has demonstrated that he is unwilling to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic. He showed that on January 6, 2020. He demonstrated that by his friendship with the dictators of North Korea, Russia, and Hungary to name a few, all known enemies of America or its institutions. He hasn’t met the high bar required of a president.

Kamala Harris has demonstrated a willingness to support the Constitution, to fight for the middle class, to disrupt our trek to oligarchy, and protect our civil rights. She may not be the perfect candidate but she seems to be honest and focused on more than the upper one percent of the population.

What are we to do?

First, we must vote. That is what a democracy is all about. In his book On Tyranny, Yale professor Timothy Snyder references a hero in a David Lodge novel who says that you don’t know when you make love for the last time, that you are making love for the last time. Voting is like that. Consider the Germans who elected an autocratic government who then started WW II. Consider the Czechs and Slovaks elected an autocratic Tito, or the Russians who continued to elect an autocratic leader. Even if we are unhappy with our current state of affairs, we must vote to protect our democracy, to prevent the destruction of our institutions. We may not all agree on how to do those things, but we know that those who don’t vote allow bad leaders to win.

But, we have a choice. If we want to keep  America great, if we want to preserve our democracy, if we want to write a new chapter for our country, and if we want to ensure that it is not the last vote, or the next to the last vote, the choice seems easy to make. Vote for Harris.

 

And Then There Were None!

 Ten Little Indians, a play by Agatha Christie, takes place on Indian Island where ten dandies are gathered for a weekend soiree. Things go along smashingly until one of the guests turns up murdered, and then a second one, and then another. Panic was everywhere as those still standing tried to solve the mysterious murders. And then another and another. And then there were none. I was reminded recently of that play, in which I played a minor dandy in a college production.

I drove Bev to the nail shop the other day. I didn't know what they did in there but always returned home satisfied. I waited in the car. Just the thought of, much less watching someone play with your toes and do lethal harm with scissors and other surgical instruments is more than my sensitivities could manage, being a fragile flower and all. I stayed in the car, read the NYT, and did my daily Wordle, then the Mini crossword, and Connections. After what seemed like most of the morning, I spotted her through the window, standing at the checkout counter. A few minutes later she was still standing there.

What could go wrong? The credit card is good. There is a debit card if she needs it. What could go wrong? I could help, but that seldom bodes well for me.

I left the car's safety, walked a few steps to the front door of the “spa” and went to the rescue. I had no idea places like that existed. There must have been fifteen or twenty chairs, each with a customer dangling a hand, getting a manicure. Anyway, there was a lot of hand-holding, scraping, and painting going on. That was the half of it. There was another section with huge lounge chairs and buckets of water for customers to put their feet in.

Herself was the first in line at the checkout counter after the shopping center's internet went down and her credit card was useless. There was no sense in me trying to do a workaround when twenty under-thirty-year-olds were working in the place. Not to worry though because doesn’t everyone have a hot spot on their phone? If credit cards don’t work, maybe the debit card will work. Nope. One down.

The lady behind us knew how to make the system work with the help of her toe cutter. Nope. Two down.

“Don’t worry” says the third in line. She knew how to do it. Nope. Three down and you could see the panic set in among the customers checking out and the workers hoping to spend the day cutting and scrapping. Around the entire “spa” you could feel the panic in the air, you could see panic on faces, and you could see people entering a world they didn’t understand.

A woman over thirty, based on her solution, suggested that we all just use cash. Panic! Another world nobody understood. Four down. Five down. Six down. Seven down... Someone suggested writing a check. Ten down. “And then there were none.”

I learned a lot in that thirty minutes.  Women are willing to suffer pain and pure brutality to look good. I know I’m not supposed to say that. Let me just say that if it were a choice between the county jail or the “spa” you know which one I would take.

I also learned how an enemy could shut down this country in a flash – blow up the electric grid, the cell network, or just shut down Wi-Fi. We are very vulnerable without our phones and cards. As we Americans try to catch up to the rest of the world by transferring everything to our phones and paying for everything with our phones, we become increasingly dependent on technology that we can’t control.

I suppose that I could just go to the ATM from time to time or ask for cash back at the grocery store, but what would I do with it. To be honest, I do carry a five-dollar bill in my money clip just so that people won’t think that I don’t have five dollars to my name, but it usually stays there for months. I think Bev has a checkbook somewhere. Maybe we should carry a blank check for emergencies. Nah!

By the way, the “spa” solved the problem much like we used to manage difficulties like this. They assumed their customers were honest. They took our phone numbers,  called us a few hours later and we gave them our card number. Done!

 

 

We Have A Choice

 The conventions are over! We have the candidates. In early November we should know who won the election for the most important job in the world. How so? The President of the U.S.A. is the leader of the first democratic country in the world, the most powerful country in the world, and the most relied upon country to help keep the world peace.

The first duty a President assumes, no matter the political party is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. That is the sacred oath that they take. They don’t take an oath to a god, they don’t take an oath to support a person, but they do take an oath to support the Constitution. It is their job to protect our democracy and in this age to ensure that a democratic form of government delivers for the people.

The nationalist populism movement is afoot across the globe and many in the U.S. have been sucked into its beliefs. Populism contains two primary claims: “True people” are locked into conflict with outsiders, including establishment elites, and nothing should constrain the will of the “true” people.[i] Nationalist movements generally fall into three groups: anti-establishment, socio-economic, and cultural. We see the Nationalism movement led by Viktor Orban in Hungary, Recep Erdogan in Türkiye, Donald Trump’s MAGA movement in the U.S., and Evo Morales in Bolivia, to name a few. Just last June, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party won enough seats in the Parliament to make a coalition government almost impossible. On September 1, the far-right Alternative Fur Deutschland Party won an election in the eastern states, the first time since the Nazis were ousted at the end of WWII. Nationalist Populism is a direct confrontation with our Constitution. But, because it is a worldwide movement and because MAGA has so many adherents in the U.S., we easily could lose our democracy and be subjected to an authoritarian administration that we elected, just as the Germans did in the 1930s. We expect our president to push back on these movements.

The second job of the President is to preserve and defend our alliances designed to keep the world at peace, and to fight against attempts of one country to invade others.

After World War II the U.S. led an effort to create the United Nations and NATO. Both were charged with keeping the world at peace and forming a new world order that included the notion that one country should not invade another. That world order was held until February 2014 when Russia invaded the Crimea. Again, in February of 2022, they pushed troops inland attempting to occupy the rest of Ukraine. Two years later they still hold only a small part of the country. Ukraine is receiving aid from most of the NATO countries even though it is not yet a member because if Ukraine falls, the rest of Europe is at risk of invasion. Article 5 of the NATO Charter states that if one country is invaded all of the other members will come to their aid. They came to the aid of the U.S. on 9/11.

The third job of the President is to uplift the people of the country, to be the adult in the room. They are asked to continue to build a more perfect union. They do that by supporting the institutions that weld the citizenry, which make us who we are. They uplift people by treating them with respect, by providing for the common good. And yet, even today we hear a candidate tout the axioms of the 1920s Klan boast that whites are “of this superior blood”… “upon whom depends the future of civilization.”[ii]

We are supposed to be that shining city on the hill, the beacon that beckons others, the glow from our torch invites even the wretched refuse of teeming shores[iii] to join our trek to a unified set of values. Those whom we welcome do not poison the blood of those currently living here.

If the sacred oath calls for the president to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, they need to do that. They can’t boast that they will be a dictator on their first day in office. They can’t ignore the non-political status of the Department of Justice; they can’t say they will use the armed forces to control the people who disagree with them or march in opposition to a government mandate. If they do any of those things they disqualify themselves from the position.

The U.S. is a traditional leader of the free world. Our treaties, pacts, and behaviors are designed to create a free world order where each nation respects the sovereignty of the other. A president should not say that they will ignore those institutions and encourage an enemy nation to do ”whatever the hell you want” to our allies. A person who would do that is not qualified to be president.

The nation's leader is responsible for at least trying to ensure that we are a united nation rather than trying to separate people, make them unhappy with others, heap scorn on civil servants, and try to upset the peaceful transfer of power and other institutional upheavals. If they can’t encourage us to experience the “joy that comes in the morning,[iv] why bother to run for the job.

We can stipulate that the price of groceries is too high and that gas prices are too high and that that makes making ends meet each month a difficult task. But those strains pale in comparison to what is at stake in this year’s election.

The Greeks taught us centuries ago to reach deep into the soul of our leaders. Socrates would be appalled by the current state of affairs. No candidate is a perfect choice for president, so we have to decide by comparing what we see deep down in the candidates.

One candidate is a convicted felon, found guilty of sexual abuse, accused of trying to overthrow the government, falsifying business and personal information to secure loans as well as interfering with vote counting in the last presidential election. And yet, he has tens of millions of people who support his candidacy. Millions of people are buying into the Populism charade plan, a reflection of the gap in perceived equal treatment in this country, distrust of the “establishment” and dislike of immigrants and minorities. They have heard the same lies so often that they believe them. Nearly half the country is willing to vote against our democratic values and accept the torches of the far-right to better themselves. They are willing to vote for a man who could not pass the background check for a minimum-wage job.

National Populism flies in the face of everything American. We have seen its destructive power that nearly wiped out the “greatest generation.” We have seen how it tore our nation apart years ago in the time of the Robber Barons and in the McCarthy era. We have never in our history had a serious candidate for president who was awaiting sentencing for felonies and awaiting trial for more offenses against our government. 

We have a choice.

---

[i] Populists in power around the world, Institute for Global Insights, 11/17/2018

[ii]The Klan of Yesterday and of Today – Proceedings of the Second Imperial Klonvocation Held at Kansas City Missouri 1924, Hiram Wesley Evans

[iii] “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Poem on Statue of Liberty – Emma Lazarus, 1885

[iv] Psalm 35.5

There is a difference!

Interstate 5 splits the spine of the great inland valleys of California from Oregon to Mexico, mostly with views of bare ground - desert really, except for large industrial farms growing produce and tree products where water flows,  supplied by massive and expensive aqueducts that drain the Sacramento and American rivers up north. The exception to this boring north-to-south highway is the Pacific Coast Highway -PCH, and the east-to-west roads through the Sierra and coastal mountains, those with even numbers. One has to be in awe of the majestic giants that cover the hillsides and the Sierra. But …

Transplanted to the western edge of the continent over fifty years ago, I unknowingly acclimated to the vast stretches of little or nothing interesting going north or south, of roads that go for miles upon miles with only the slightest of curves, bumper to bumper at seventy miles per hour, or those cheek to jowl to subdivision homes themselves cheek to jowl.

A recent return to the colonial side and a nostalgiac day trip back to upper Vermont rebounded memories long sidelined and feelings long forgotten It is a different world settled in a different time; towns far apart, houses far apart. Farms hewn from forest land raise a collection of stones each spring, material for walls that make good neighbors. The farms, the homesteads, and the towns big or small are all forest clearings. 

Vermont is eighty percent forest.  The four lanes, the two lanes, and the one lane cut through the trees, leaving towns and cities unseen, for the most part, creating surprising vistas at every turn, meeting other cars every mile or so. No doubt left that you are in the midst of a full-on forest.

The Boreal forest differs from much of the country, even other areas with many trees. This biome that circles the global north, generally above the 50^th parallel, dips ever so slightly into the upper reaches of the Northeast Kingdom and then extends across New Hampshire’s North Country into Maine.

The West Coast has two seasons each year, summer and winter. The northern sector of the East Coast has the usual four seasons, more if you include the black-fly season, January thaw, mud season, and the fourth of July. It was spring. The trees were beginning to leaf out, the distant mountains still more black than green, but forest upon forest of hardwoods and softwoods building strength day by day, anticipating the reds and yellows of fall. Red maples, white and yellow birch, beech, hemlock, and balsam create woodlands hard to see through, with saplings growing where old growth fell during the harsh winter. So different from the western states.

The Northeast Kingdom’s two-thousand square miles, also over eighty percent forest, encourage life in small towns - fifty-five of them, for its sixty-five-thousand inhabitants who get to and from mostly on unpaved roads.

It is a different feeling, being in a forest completely surrounded except for the occasionally cleared farmland, the small towns with white-spire churches, and few houses. You are enveloped in your environment, you sense the closeness, and you wonder where the people are and where they work. You know where they hunt and fish.

They say you are what you were when. You once tramped these woods, hunted these forests, fished those ponds, drove the dirt roads, and lived the life that people live who live in the boreal forest. It made you independent, uncomfortable in crowds, with a preference for the rural drive rather than the interstate.

Back now, within miles of the Pacific, life demands a return to the crowded roads, the life in the fast lane, missing the new memories of the boreal forest. Readjustment came much too quickly.

 

Institutional Fraying!

It bears repeating. Our institutions are the keystones of our democracy. Destroy them and the system fails. We all know this, yet we do not get upset enough when people chip away at the mortar that binds them and us.

Institutions require communal acceptance by a supermajority of the population. Few require more acceptances than the Supreme Court. It does not have an army or a police force. It cannot write regulations that protect us. It cannot declare war or appropriate money. Yet it is the third equal branch of our republic. It is strength is the people’s acceptance of its rulings.

To gain that acceptance it must be above reproach. Its justices are appointed by the executive branch with the advice and consent of the legislative branch. Their term is for life. Any scandal or perception of a scandal chips away at their reputation. A conflict of interest or the perception of a conflict further chips deeper, wider, and farther into the mortar.

Federal judges are bound by a strict code of ethics. The slightest hint of conflict or bad behavior results in recusal or resignation. Not so for the Justices of the highest court in the land. It only recently adopted a code that equates to using cement without water. It matters.

Our tradition is that the court's judgments become the law of the land. Several cases changed who we are, how we relate to each other, and how we move forward.

·         Marbury v. Madison, 1803 – the court has the power to interpret the Constitution and the laws of Congress.

·         Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896 – the court ruled that school segregation was permitted as long as the facilities were equal.

·         Dred Scott v. Sanford, 1857 – the court ruled that enslaved people were not citizens and had no standing in courts.

·         Brown v. Board of Education, 1954 – the court overturned Plessy v. Ferguson.

·         Miranda v. Arizona, 1966 – the court ruled that Miranda’s conviction was inappropriate because he had not been told of his constitutional rights.

·         Roe v Wade, 1973 – the court ruled that a woman’s right to choose an abortion was protected by the privacy content of the 14^th Amendment.

·         U. S. v. Nixon, 1974 – the court ruled unanimously that the need to provide evidence in a court case outweighed a president’s limited immunity.

·         Dobbs v. Jackson, 2022 – the court ruled that abortion was not protected at the federal level and was the decision of the states.

We may not agree with the court’s rulings, but we live with them because we believe they rule on the law, not the political winds. Today the court, the institution itself, is at its lowest level of national trust among the people.

Justices are the product of a political system. Once installed, however, we expect them to behave in a non-political way. Two sitting justices seem hellbent on destroying the court’s institutional integrity. There is division in the country that we have not seen since the Civil War. The court is expected to rule on the issue of presidential immunity, on the issue of the January 6^th invasion of the capitol building, and on the question of interference in the counting of the ballots in the last election. To preserve its integrity, those sitting on the bench must be seen as impartial. But …

Justice Thomas cannot be seen as impartial.

·         He has identified rights that he thinks should be changed.

·         His wife is complicit in the January 6^th insurrection and called for using fake electors in more than one state.

Justice Alito cannot be seen as impartial.

·         An inverted U.S. flag flew at his home. While nominally a sign of distress it became a symbol for those who believed in an unsubstantiated stolen election.

·         “An Appeal to Heaven” flag, symbolic of white Christian nationalism and some conspiracy theories, flew from his vacation home in New Jersey.

 Both justices exhibit more than a hint of impartiality in their beliefs on important issues potentially facing the court. Neither can pretend to be impartial in their decision-making. Neither has recused themselves from cases related to their behavior or obvious conflicts of interest.

These two justices were appointed for life and can only be removed by impeachment. They have shown disdain for "equal justice under law." Common decency would suggest that they resign.

 

Didja Ever?

 Didja Ever?

Did you ever think that you would …? Truthfully, when I was 12 years old I was more worried about getting to thirteen. Today my twelve-year plan seems ambitious.

I don’t think you think about getting to eighty-five until you’re eighty-four. Even at thirty, forty seemed a long way away.

Recently I was thinking about hosting a party when I turned eighty-five. Truth is, there aren’t many people in the same age bracket to invite. Too many long-time friends have moved to warmer climates, moved to senior assisted living, or moved on to …

So what accounts for some of us making it to a ripe old age while others don’t? There were twelve of us in my eighth-grade class. Seven of us still communicate occasionally during the year. A good number of high school classmates still send out the occasional email. Some, through no fault of their own, receive the occasional rant from an audacious blogger. I’ve noticed a lot of occasional occupies in the later years.

Some say genes have a lot to do with the aging process. That may be part of the equation. I’ll accept it since my biological father reached ninety-four without much trouble. He had a good ten-year plan too.

With absolutely no attempt at in-depth research, ("l'audace, toujours l'audace,”) I’m thinking that making it to thirty is pure dumb luck. If you can stay out of a shooting war, live in a safe area, work in a safe environment, and don’t act too stupid, your chances are reasonably good. You can stay out of a shooting war unless your number comes up, you can move to a safer neighborhood if you have to, and you can change jobs if you don’t feel safe. Stupid is another story. You can’t fix stupid! (I’ve waited years to use that cliché.)

The early years were easier. We lived in a nice quiet town in the mountains of Vermont. Quiet was an understatement. Family, church, school, scouts, and college made up most of our lives, the better part of Eisenhower’s calm leadership. Life was predictable for middle-class French-Canadian families in a town with a large French-Canadian population; French church, French school, French hospital, French friends, until it wasn’t. After attending an all-boys school for eight years, taught by nuns mostly from Canada, entering the local high school with men and women lay teachers, and girls was a bit of a shock. I still remember the first period of my first day at that school. The teacher asked me to multiply numbers and letters. It had to be a trick question, right? He called it algebra.  I adjusted less quickly than my counterparts. I’m still working on it.

After college, I taught school for a few years and then moved into the business world. My first gig was as a trainer for a commodity brokerage firm. They wanted a school teacher who didn’t know how to trade pork bellies and soybeans or copper. I was the perfect choice. That led to training positions at a couple of chemical companies. When the call came from my former boss to move to San Francisco as Director of Training for a major drug distributor, we made the hard decision. We would go for two years, soak up some California sun and lifestyle, and then go back to St. Louis. That was fifty years ago this month, Didja Ever?

That period between twenty-four and forty years is always a whirlwind. Commuting to The City every day, constant flights cross country, and up and down the country, weekends at the kids' activities, and just trying to keep up. Didja ever think you would make it to forty?

I never really thought about it. I should have paid better attention. In April of that year I collapsed at a meeting I was facilitating; gangrenous gall bladder it was. Later in October, I had open heart surgery, a big deal back then, triple bypass. The doctor told me it was good for about twelve or thirteen years. I’d say he exceeded customer expectations. Didja ever think about making it to fifty? Yes!

I was thinking about retiring at sixty or sixty-five when my employer decided that a bunch of us fifty-five-year-olds had outspent our usefulness. They thought I would do better as an independent consultant. I had been with them for twenty years, but I’ve been collecting retirement checks for thirty years, so far. Getting older is the best revenge.

Ya, but didja ever think about getting to eighty-five. Not until I was eighty-four. It seems that special events get closer as one ages. “He’s forty, that’s a big one. We should have a party. He’s fifty. Wow, let’s have a fifty’s party. He’s sixty. That’s a big one too. He’s sixty-five… He’s seventy… He’s seventy-five … “ and it goes on. The gathering at eighty-seven should be a barn burner. Didja ever think about being ninety. Starting to.

I went to the doctor the other day. He thought my odds were good. He said I was in good shape for the shape I’m in (cliches abound) and the age I’m carrying, despite parts giving up or slowing down, or getting heavier. I had to fill out a questionnaire about how much alcohol I drank. I asked him if two glasses of wine with dinner were too much. “What the hell, at your age, enjoy.” I’m trying to make that into a positive. I’m not happy when he laughs at my ten-year plan.

I’m not sure why I’m worked up over this whole thing. Most of my grade school and high school classmates and friends from back then are a year older than me and seem OK with it all. But the statistics are a bit scary. Only 21% of men in the U.S. make it to eighty-five. It’s a bit weird, but nearly 20% also make it to ninety years old. But only six percent make it to one hundred years old. So a ten-year plan seems reasonable but a fifteen-year plan is a stretch and will need some effort. Didja ever think about making it to one hundred? I’ll worry about that when I hit ninety-five.

In the meantime, if two glasses of wine with dinner are OK, three might be better.

 

Chuck Woods

April 1, 1939 –

 

 

 

 

 

IDs and Voting!

I went to the doctor the other day. They wanted to see my ID even after I had shown them my insurance card. The doctor sent me to the X-ray department for, you know, an X-ray. They asked for my ID after I showed them my insurance card. I went to the bank the other day. You know, I actually walked into the building. It was the same as I remembered it from a few years ago. They asked to see my ID. I had an issue with my cable company. After I gave them my phone number they wanted to see my ID.

 

I am not supposed to say this, but I am in favor of requiring a valid ID to vote. Now, a valid ID can take many forms. Let us start with the basic ones, a driver’s license or a state photo ID. The liberals of the world will tell you that puts too much of a burden on poor people and people in rural areas and just about anywhere else. I know I am on the left end of the right wing or the right end of the left-wing, whatever, but I can tell you that is hogwash. I am not sure what hogwash is, but that is what no-ID-to-vote is.

 

In my state, people are registered to vote automatically when they apply for a driver’s license or for a state photo ID. When they change their name or address, they must notify the DMV to update their license which automatically updates their voter information. The real point is that a person must opt out of registering to vote, rather than opting in. Some states make the registration process difficult, discouraging some folks from voting.

 

While at the medical center, ( I don’t want to be judgmental) most folks did not appear to be living in the world of high-priced purses and yet they all showed their photo IDs after showing their insurance card.

 

Liberals around the country tell us that it is too difficult for poor people to get government-issued IDs. I don’t know about the rest of the country, but what I see most days are people of all economic levels who already have government-issued IDs. The liberals need to stop with the shibboleth. The conservatives worry that non-citizens will pack the voting booths or that dead people will vote in masses. No data proves that happens, except maybe in Chicago where folklore tells us that voting early and often is a local mantra. But that’s Chicago.

 

State legislatures have been on a tear in the last few years looking for new ways and old ways to limit voting by folks who do not support their ruling party. They started with Gerrymandering, moved on to exhaustive voter registration processes, minimized voting hours in fewer and fewer locations, and where it is against the law to offer water to those standing in line to vote. They are really good at it.

 

But here is the rub. In our democracy, unbridled voting sets us apart from those countries that use voting as a coverup for autocrats who tell the people they are fighting for democracy, like Russia or Hungary. The people gather periodically to cast a vote. The winner is the one with the most votes, and we move on. To my mind, any attempt to jiggle that easy process is undemocratic and a violation of American values. We are the nation that is supposed to be the city on the hill, the bright light for others to follow. We were that a few years ago. Today, not so much.

 

Why not have a national policy for who votes in national elections? It is really easy to do. Everyone over the age of eighteen is automatically registered to vote by the state DMV. Every registered voter is sent a ballot that they return to vote-gathering locations close to home, bring to an election center, or mail in. Full stop!

 

Why is this important? People need to have faith in our election systems. If everyone is required to show their ID when they register to vote or at the local vote center, more people will have trust in the process. If our state legislatures would make voter registration easy but verifiable, we would eliminate four years of people baying in the wind about a stolen election that wasn’t.

 

I want to know that everyone who votes is a citizen with a valid ID. I want to know that getting a valid ID is easy. It seems an easy solution to a problem that shouldn’t exist in the first place.