Greetings,

In October Barack Obama said “the threat to our democracy does not come from one person in the White House or Republicans in Congress or big money lobbyists. The biggest threat to our democracy is indifference.” He is correct that indifference is a problem, but wrong on so many other levels. It’s fascinating to me that this election has thrust this issue into the spotlight… indifference endangers our democracy, but the organized, naked, fascist efforts to remove voting rights shows how critically important our votes actually are…

Suppose you can’t shake the feeling that as citizens we’re obligated to vote, even if it does no good. Then, Red or Blue, Lib or Con, you should be appalled at the nationwide efforts to disenfranchise voters. These efforts take many forms; gerrymandering, voting obstacles, felon voting laws, voter ID laws, and others, but the worst may be the mass voting purges going on in several states. The naïve may not be concerned because “their” vote isn’t in danger; it’s “those” votes that are being purged. But the people doing the purging don’t care… any possibility of someone voting against them is a possibility they can’t have, and the whole point of purging is to eliminate entire groups of people to stop the possibility of individual undesirable votes… anyone who tries to take the vote of any American is your enemy. Not all Republicans are part of the purges, but the Republicans who are part of it are your enemies, enemies of America, and enemies of Democracy. When/if the Democrats start purging they’ll be our enemies too, but until then I don’t see how rational, principled Republicans can stand with the vote thieves.

Purges and election restrictions are theoretically intended to ‘ensure the security of our electoral system’. A laudable goal if true, but the ‘problem’ they’re defending against doesn’t exist and the solution they’re proposing breaks the system rather than protecting it. Study after study has shown voter fraud does exist… in rates of tens of fraudulent votes per billions cast, not enough to swing any election. But the Republicans’ proposed solution disenfranchises tens of thousands of people, far more than enough to affect results. This gives me yet another chance to brag on Oregon… for a secure system that also encourages participation, look no further than our mail-in voting system. Recognized as the easiest state to vote in the country, we customarily had high voting rates already but our 2016 “Motor Voter” law increased participation from 64% to 68%. Our first-in-the-country vote-by-mail system (now joined by Washington and Colorado) is not only secure while voting, AND leaves an auditable trail, AND requires no time off to vote, AND has no voting lines, but it’s easy. One of our clients sent us a picture of he and his friends gathered together in a bar to vote, creating “Vote by Pub”!

Cicero vote Roman Senator Cicero once said that “freedom is participation in power”, and the word “idiot” was created by the Greeks to describe people who didn’t (or couldn’t) participate in public life, content to live under laws and rules written by others whether or not they were in the interest of the idiot in question. In 2016 only about 36% of eligible voters chose to be free, leaving 64% who chose to be idiots. As America teeters on the brink of authoritarian fascism I hope our choice won’t be whether to actively help dismantle democracy or stand meekly by while it happens. I believe we’re better than a nation of idiots, I believe we’re a nation of kings. Even if our kingship is shared, WE own the power to control our destiny… but ONLY if we participate in that power.