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AAs a person whose opinion on the value
of voting in a capitalist democracy leans toward that expressed
by the anarchist graffiti that reads: "If voting made any
difference, it would be illegal," I am occasionally asked
by people I meet whether or not I vote. The answer I usually
give is yes, except when there is absolutely no one to vote for.
I have found the latter to be the case in every US presidential
election after 1972 when George McGovern ran against Richard
Nixon. I always vote in local elections and even will hold my
nose and vote in Congressional and Senate races. When I lived
in California and Washington state, I always registered my approval
or disapproval on the various initiatives put forth by citizens'
groups and corporate entities masquerading as such.
To use a baseball metaphor,
I consider voting to be like the first strike thrown by a pitcher.
For those that don't know baseball rules, a pitcher must throw
three strikes to get a batter out. So, if voting is the first
strike, then pressuring elected officials via letters and other
benign methods would be the second. The third strike would be
protests in the street. To finish the metaphor, one must get
that third strike to be effective and complete the task. So,
when I vote I know the act is merely the beginning of a sometimes
difficult process, with the difficulty depending on the strength
of the opposition.
Anyhow, in many states in the
United States there are multilingual ballots. The obvious reason
for the ballots is so that all eligible citizens can understand
who and what they are voting for. This mechanism was established
in the 1975 extension of the 1964 Voting Rights Act that eliminated
a number of practices designed by mostly southern US states to
prevent African-Americans from voting. In the current congressional
debate over the rights of immigrants a number of congresspeople
(led by Paul King of Iowa) opposed to legalizing the status of
immigrants illegally in the US have sent a letter to Representative
Sensenbrenner asking him to include a clause ending the use of
such ballots in whatever legislation dealing with immigration
that the Congress ends up passing. To his credit, the habitually
foul Sensenbrenner is on record favoring extending this particular
section of the law (and the rest of the Act) until 2032.
In a recent column, the right
wing columnist George Will (who writes interesting stuff on baseball
but could otherwise be the reason Will Shakespeare wrote the
line "A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying
nothing,") agreed with the congresspeople that want multilingual
ballots to end. The columnist's argument is essentially this:
how can citizens participate in the national conversation if
they can't understand it? As I stated above, Mr. Will has refined
the art of the circular argument. After all, isn't the very reason
multilingual ballots were instituted was so that those voters
whose first language is something other than English can understand
the ballot and, consequently, the so-called national conversation?
The reality behind the letter
sent by the fifty-six congresspeople asking for the end of multilingual
ballots is that these men and women are not just against illegal
immigrants, they are against all immigrants that have yet to
assimilate. Furthermore, these congresspeople do not want those
immigrants to assimilate. That is why they want to exclude them
from voting. If they could, they would enact legislation that
forbade them from living in the US, as well. Fortunately, such
a law would require changing the US constitution--a fact that
makes such a desire that much harder to turn into reality.
The history of voting rights
in the United States has always been a battle between those in
the propertied classes who wanted to keep the vote for themselves
and those that wanted to extend the right to all citizens. Indeed,
in the early days of the nation, it was not only just white males
with a certain amount of property that were allowed to vote,
the law actually gave those white men that owned slaves one-and-three-fifths
of a vote. This is part of the reason the slave states had such
a hold on the government in Washington, DC. One could argue that
this legacy continues, despite the result of the War Between
the States.
So, back to that baseball metaphor
and those fifty-six congresspeople. Not only is it time to send
their request to end multilingual ballots to the showers, it's
time to send the whole bunch of them into retirement. Don't vote
'em into the hall of fame. Vote them into the dustbin of history.
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
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