And the sign said, “Come on in and vote, but vote our way. So I tossed my ID back on the desk and went in to have my say.
“It don’t matter whether it’s legal or not, voting is our right, and hopefully we’ll get enough to keep Trump out of sight.”
With abject apologies to the Five Man Electrical Band, or later Tesla with the cover, I rearranged the lyrics to “Signs” to highlight my frustration with the comedy sketch that has become elections in our country.
Following the debacle that many refer to as the 2020 presidential election, the country and most states decided to tweak election laws to ensure the integrity of our elections, even though so many felt that election was as fair and impartial as one can be. I guess fair and impartial elections always require a bit of tinkering to ensure they qualify on both counts.
Texas itself issued edicts that required counties to have specific equipment, and a scouring of election rolls was launched which resulted in a rather large purge of noncitizen voters from the rolls, as well as a lawsuit by Attorney General Ken Paxton against the feds over releasing information on citizenship status.
Texas is not alone in that as other states have sued as well.
The other side, though, has filed lawsuits in numerous courts over similar purges, and even the federal Department of Justice has sued the state of Virginia for violating something called the Quiet Period Provision, which mandates that voters cannot be removed from the rolls too close to an election.
A judge ordered more than 1,500 people back on the rolls in that state.
Judges have tossed out lawsuits over registration in Michigan; a new lawsuit in Oregon claims that there are more registered voters in that state than there are people eligible to vote.
There are plenty more of these stories and events, so it would seem that a country with a couple of political parties hell-bent on “saving our democracy” would understand that a democracy does not work unless it follows the rule of law. Without law, then everyone’s vote becomes meaningless, since no one has to abide by it.
For instance, the law here at both the federal and state level is very clear that non-citizens, including permanent legal residents, are ineligible to vote in federal, state and most local elections. To not follow laws is the very definition of anarchy: a state of disorder due to absence or non-recognition of authority or other controlling systems?
What can we call it when the government, which not only creates but interprets and enforces law, actively works against those laws?
Seems to me that it’s not actually anarchy, but the complete opposite — dictatorship, as in do what I say, not what I do. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
In his first election run back in 2016, one phrase uttered by Donald Trump has stuck with me for all these years: “Either we’re a nation of laws or we’re not.”
The country has laws, apparently whatever happens to be expedient for the government, so there may need to be a new term for what this is.
<i>Tony Farkas is editor of the Trinity County News-Standard and the San Jacinto News-Times. He can be reached at tony@polkcountypublishing.com.</i>
