Letters 08-01-2016
July 29, 2016
Voter Suppression And Choice
In 2013, five Supreme Court justices, each appointed by Republican presidents, knocked the teeth out of the Voting Rights Act. Immediately a majority of Republican-dominated states began passing laws aimed at suppressing the votes of their majority Democrat demographics: minorities, students and the elderly. These laws – requiring voter IDs, cutting early voting, eliminating same-day registration, closing selected polling places, banning straight-ticket voting, etc. – never flat-out deny a person’s right to vote; they just make actual registering and voting more difficult, and therefore make it more likely that individuals in certain groups will not vote. Think of voter suppression as a kind of reverse marketing strategy, one aimed at getting people not to do something.
Federal courts are now rejecting some of these restrictive laws as unconstitutional, but appeals may leave them in effect and able to distort November’s election results.
Voter suppression is basically a strategy to steal elections. But it also speaks pointedly to groups of American citizens, saying, "Your vote is not needed. You don’t count." The strategy thumbs its nose at that well-known passage in the Declaration of Independence: "Governments (derive) their just powers from the consent of the governed."
The issue is not whether Republicans can or cannot try to suppress votes. Republican leadership has chosen that strategy.
The question is whether other Americans will continue to support that strategy with our votes. Do you feel comfortable looking another American in the eye and saying, "I don’t want you to vote. And I’m doing what I can to see that you don’t?"
Is this how we keep America strong?
Ron Tschudy, Central Lake
Free Parking
Patrick Sullivan’s good story on parking overlooked one source of "free parking" that has become an increasing problem in Traverse City: spill-over into adjacent neighborhoods. Instead of discouraging people from bringing cars downtown, we’re allowing them to park on both sides of narrow residential streets all day long. This is not only frustrating for homeowners but (ironically) discourages bicycling, which has become almost impossible in some areas since both street and sidewalk are off limits.
Karen Anderson, Traverse City
Real American Duality
Isiah Smith didn’t really put his deep thinking hat on before writing the "American Duality" commentary. First there’s geography. His daughter feels safer in Sweden than in the United States, at least partially because of the violence in Dallas, Baton Rouge and Minnesota. Really? Safer than in northern Michigan, which is further away from Dallas and Baton Rouge than Stockholm is from Ansbach, Paris or Brussels and no closer to Minnesota than Sweden is to Germany? Did Smith miss recent supremely violent events in those places? Alrighty then!
Then Smith sees hope in a Supreme Court that finds it acceptable that abortion clinics be held to lower sanitary and safety regulations than those that govern hospitals. Very broad-minded of him.
And of course, more hope from a favorable Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage. I happen to support gay marriage and have no problem with that decision. But the more strident of the gay marriage supporters (a quite large numbers, it seems) can’t quite accept that legal victory without also trying to crush the freedom of that segment of the Christian universe who disagrees with it. One might infer that Smith agrees with aggression against those Christians even from the hypocrites who do so while unself-consciously sporting a "Co-Exist" sticker on their vehicles.
It’s one thing to hold a political pointof-view. It’s quite another to condemn a nation based on such shoddy reasoning.
John Casteel, Traverse City