Let me finish tonight with my special plea that no legitimate voter will be denied a ballot this November.
If this election turns out to be close — and it may well be close — do we want to wake up Wednesday morning with a president selected, not because he got the most votes, but because enough voters were kept from casting a ballot?
We had the screw-up in Florida and the intervention by the Supreme Court that put Dubya into office with well over 500,000 votes short of Al Gore’s total. We’ve had Citizen’s United allowing billionaires to have unlimited sway in what we see and hear about the candidates at election time. Does either side want an election decided by the inability of lifelong voters to have their say, to have their vote, to matter when the ballots are counted?
I don’t doubt some people would sit and chortle with their friends how much fun it would be to grab the presidency by grabbing away some old people’s ability to vote, to send them back to their rowhouses hurt and humiliated, having been told they are not legitimate voters and are not to play a role in what is for them an historic election. It would be an assault on our democracy, worse than Watergate, worse than the electoral dumbshow that led to Dubya. It will show you a real “citizens united.” There will be rebellion in the streets if this election is decided by an outrageous, in-your-face denial of the most basic freedom: the right to choose our country’s leader.
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