American elections boast a sad tradition of disenfranchisement which simply means some Americans want to cheat other Americans of their right to vote.  This is explored today in Adam Cohen’s editorial observation on the temptation to suppress the other side’s vote.  It has worked time an again and very few are excited about it for to be excited about it means that you have to do something about it.  As soon as the excitement of the election clears, thoughts of reforming really coarse and blatant means of suppressing individual or group voting, go away.

I have always cherished my right to vote.  I would not have had the right to vote in the early days of this country – I was landless and if you had no property you had no right to vote.  The right to vote is not like the right to breathe.  You automatically breathe or else you die.  You do not vote unless you register and if you do not pass the rules that exclude whole groups of potential voters, you simply cannot vote in any election.  Prior prison incarceration – even if you serve out your term – will prevent you from voting.  Of course! You must be a citizen in order to vote.  Lazy people who have lived in this country for a life-time, if they have not taken the trouble to become citizens; they cannot vote.  The blackest days of corruption of the right to vote have been when people “of color” were denied the right to vote.  Today, it is immigrants who are needed to till our fields but are not invited into the voting booth.

Women have had the vote for almost a century, yet they do not vote for their own interests.  This is the same complaint about 18 year olds who get the vote when they turn from 17 year olds that they do not take the trouble to vote even though they learned about it in school.  Sometime in their college years some become passionate to demonstrate in the streets and carry signs in favor of or against some cause. There are voices of anger and partisanship that whip up frenzies in ordinary placid citizens to get out and vote for this or that and the voices disappear as soon as the Election Day ruckus falls behind.

I think that the right to vote is something akin to being sacred and should not be sacrificed on the altar of ignorance or disinterest.  For far too long there has been a history of disenfranchisement of voters cynically directed by wily politicians who must win at any cost – and deprive others of the right to vote.  They count each precinct’s eligible voters and make sure they come out if they vote their side of an issue.  They work very hard to prevent those who vote the other side to come out on Election Day.  What happens is the idea of universal suffrage is trashed when those in charge of denying others the right to vote, win.  America loses when this happens and our vaunted democracy is shown up for the farce it really is.