Falling Back, 36. How America Votes.

Once upon a time, there was a nation that boasted of its open and democratic process. It would go so far as to sometimes send envoys to observe elections in other countries, to make sure they were as open and free as those countries claimed. Not that that country was always justified in doing so, because part of that observance was also to make sure that things in those countries went in favor of its own interests in the region. Yet, its claim of fair elections at home was mostly true.

That country is now facing an election process steeped in confusion and denial. Voters are being denied a fair election by having polling places disappear, their mail-in ballots questioned, and fake ballot collection boxes set up to confuse them (and in the process, possibly have their ballots disappear). This is the United States, the country that once boasted of being the first country with a true representative government.

Not that that was always the case. Women were not represented until a hundred years ago, when they could first vote. Minorities were encouraged, sometimes through lynching, to forego their right to vote. Not until the end of the twentieth century was the voting process truly available to all citizens, and even then, depending on the state, if the citizen was a felon, they had no right to vote. 

In the past twenty years, since the ascendancy of the Republicans in the House and Senate, those rights have been whittled away. It has gotten to the point, that in some states, those who want to vote early in person, have been waiting in lines for ten hours or more. Why? Because polling places have been closed, primarily in counties where the majority of the citizens belong to minorities. Few homogenously rich and white areas have been affected by this reduction. 

During the last few elections in Spain, many who live abroad have complained that the voting process for them has become so complicated, that some cannot even vote. Once, every Spaniard living abroad and registered at their local consulate or embassy, received their ballots automatically by mail. The conservative government of either Aznar or Rajoy, I forget which, changed that, and now Spaniards abroad have to solicit their ballot through the consulate or embassy. Unfortunately, ballots don't always arrive in time, and not everyone lives close to their country's representatives. Some are effectively disenfranchised. However, no one living in Spain has seen their rights diminished. No polling places have been closed, ballots are available (though some party's in more limited numbers), and no one has ever found their name to not be on the list. In fact, every Spanish-born citizen is automatically registered as soon as they turn eighteen.

At least within the country, the citizens of a nation that has been a representative democracy for only forty years have it easier to cast their ballot, than the citizens of a country that has prided itself on over two hundred years of doing so. The United States is no longer at the forefront of the freedoms it has so zealously defended within the last two centuries. A new world order is emerging, and the United States is joining those who, while powerful militarily, are not paragons of freedom. Thanks to some career politicians, and a lunatic leader, it has sacrificed the common people on the altar of corporate, and personal, profit and greed. It's not that European countries are free from that sickness, but they have so far maintained a division without making a complete sacrifice of the common people, who still have some power to fight back against it.

Vote, Americans, and fight to get your power back.

Life continues.