As this episode posts, election 2014 results are rolling in. Across the country people are voting for candidates to determine the make-up of state houses, school boards and our Congress as well as potentially approving ballot measures that could expand, ensure or decimate Constitutional rights to privacy, healthcare and voting itself.
Who could have thought a decade ago that voting rights would need to appear on a ballot? I mean, isn’t democracy based on the romanticized notion of “one man, one vote?” Setting aside the intentional gender disparity and land ownership requirements that disenfranchised the poor and people of color in that original phrase, the foundation of our country has always been that of representative government.
Over the decades, access to the ballot box has EXPANDED, not contracted. People have risked imprisonment and even death to bring the right to vote to more and more of our citizenry. So why…