The "RIGHT" To Vote?

     I haven't posted a new blog in a few weeks due to health issues and the fact that I have been deeply engrossed in researching. But as promised on Face Book earlier today, here we go. This blog, when read, is going to really bother some of you readers, but, I promise, if you will read the entire blog, it will make sense in the end.  So, pour a good drink, or pop the top on your PBR, grab a bag of pork rinds and some scrapple. Enjoy and keep an open mind until the very end.

     Let's start here:
     What right to vote?
     Do you really think that you have a right to vote? I will break this to you as gently as I can: YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO VOTE UNDER THE U.S. CONSTITUTION. None, nada, it does not exist.
     It may be true that your state constitution gurantees you the right to vote - in state and local elections. But that is really as far as it goes.
     I invite you to pull out your old dog-earred copy of the U.S. Constitution. I KNOW you have one somewhere. We are a country of laws, and this document is supposed to be the supreme law of the land, the law of laws! If you don't have a copy, GOOGLE it.
     Now starting at the beginning, look for your gurantee to vote. Where is that gurantee of a right to vote? If you are sure you have that right, show it to me! And before someone tries to throw the Fourteenth and FifteenthAmendments at me, reread them, because they are not what you are looking for. So, keep digging.
     Give up yet? It is not there! The right to vote is not in the United States Constitution!!! There are provisions that prevent states from limiting any voting rights that might be present in state law based on your skin color, religion, gender or lack thereof, or other protected status. But there is no provision that United States citizens are guranteed the right to vote in national elections. Don't take my word for it, after all, I am just a good old boy in Georgia. Keep reading the U.S. Constitution, study it as you go.
     There is one person you should listen to, Michael C. Dorf, a professor of law at Columbia University, and a frequent contributor to http://www.findlaw.com/. In december 2000, he wrote a column titled, "We Need a Constitutional Right to Vote in Presidential Elections." Dorf happens to be a liberal, and it seems he was upset with the results of the 2000 election and the Florida recount debacle. Al Gore did, after all, get the majority of votes cast for president, if it weren't for that damned old Electoral College, Gore would have been elected! Dorf called the Electoral College "an undemocratic eighteenth Century relic." And then he really got on a roll:

     Amidst the divisiveness of the United States Supreme Court's second foray into the 2000
     Presidential election, it is easy to overlook the significance of the Court's earlier, unanimous
     ruling of December 4, 2000. A close reading of the decision in that case, Bush vs. Palm
     Beach County Canvassing Board, reveals a clear consensus for what will strike many
     Americans as an outrageous proposition: there is no constitutional right to vote in a
     Presidential election. The fact that the state in which you reside even permits you to vote for
     electors is purely a matter of legislative grace.

     There it is: In the current American system of government, the right to cast a ballot is not a right at all, it is a privilige offered to you by the states. The states get to decide, for instance, whether or not you are going to be allowed to vote for president. Thus far, not a single state has seen fit to allow you to do so. In everyone of the 50 states, you are not voting for the president at all. You are voting for a slate of electors. A few weeks after those electors are chosen, they get together over drinks somewhere and they - not you - decide how their votes for president are cast.
     Now for the dirty little secret that Professor Dorf and a few others already recognize: If your state decides it wants to appoint the VIP room bouncers from the state's highest-grossing strip club to be the electors in the next presidential elections, then that is how it is. Nothing you can do about it, but sit back and watch, but you have no say in how they vote.
      I would like to add my personal thoughts here: I believe that strip club bouncers may have done a better job in some elections in the latter part of the last century than the actual electors chosen by the voters. For instance, I don't think strip club bouncers would have voted for a man who has shown a penchant for using his position of power and authority to abuse women in the way at least one of our recent presidents has done. Just my personal opinion there.
      Being a realist, I realize that if this question were to go before our current Supreme Court, they would probably conjure up a right to vote from obscure Constitutional smudge. They may even say that since the citizens of some half-ass East European country are granted a right to vote, then it must be assumed ( you know what they say about assume?), in spite of any evidence to the contrary, that the right exists here as well. So much for our Constitution being the supreme law of this land.
     Let's put on our big boy and girl underwear on, and face it: the modern Supreme Court would conjure up a Constitutional right to an iPod and free music downloads if there were enough social pressure to do so. Today's Supreme Court is more an agency for social change than it is a court of law. What I am trying to convey here is that our founding fathers had no intention of establishing anything even remotely close to a "one man, one vote" electoral system. They wanted to restrict voting on several grounds, some good and some not so good. But they did not feel that the mere fact of citizenship or residency should gurantee access to a voting booth.
     Who should have the power of the ballot? Who should have the right to decide who gets to put their hands on the unique power that goes with what we call "public service" or the power to use deadly force to accomplish your goals? As you have probably figured out by now, I believe the privilige should be limited. Here is a quote, though I know not the original author, I like to recite from time to time when asked about my beliefs on the voting issue. The idea itself rings true:

     A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters
     discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. From that moment on the
     majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury,
     with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a
     dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These
     nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from
     spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance
     to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to 
    dependency; from dependency back to bondage.

Sounds familiar doesn't it? Think about it, aren't there a lot of voters in this country whose main concern in casting their vote is to fatten their pocket? Isn't our country full of businessmen who vote for the candidate who promises the biggest goverment contract? Also, aren't there millions of Americans who base their vote solely on which candidate is going to funnel the most taxpayer-funded government benefits their way?
     Isn't it obvious that we are somewhere along the apathy-to-dependency stage in the progression of socities? When was the last time you heard someone say, " I wish the government would just butt out of my desperate situation. I got myself in this mess, I will get mtself out of this mess"? I bet never! If ever there was a society where people have discovered the magic of using the ballot box as an instrument for plunder, it would be these good old United States of America.
     So now let's start to think about who deserves the right to vote, and there are several obvious candidates for restriction.
     First, welfare rats. I am not talking about the man or woman who has lost their income due to the tough economy, nor am I talking about the man or woman who has lost their ability to work because of serious health issues, so just calm down. I am talking about these welfare rats who have never worked, never tried to work, the ones who have 3 or 4 generations of welfare rats under one roof. I am talking about the welfare rats that get on TV and say "I ain't got to work, my government is going to pay my bills. Barrack Obama is our president and he is going to take care of me." As things are now, we allow people who refuse tio try to help themselves and live completely off the taxpayer money to reelect, year after year, the very people who arranged our money to be transferred to their outstretched hands in the first place. We must be nuts!!!
     Do you remember the so-called "motor voter act?" The government name for it is the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. This law even has its own web site!!! Log in to the site and you will find, emblazoned across the top of the page, The Right to Vote Means Nothing....Until You Register" You may be asking yourself, What right to vote? Well, as we have all heard, Tell a lie long enough and....
     We called that act the motor voter act because it demands that every person applying for driver's license be offered an opportunity to register to vote. Few people know that this legislation also demands that every single U.S. resident applying for any type of welfare benefits also be offered the opportunity to register to vote. It may as well be called the Welfare Voter Act. (Once again, remember which welfare recipients I am talking about.)
     Did you ever consider the possibility that the politicians behind motor voter were actually motivated by self-interest? That they were simply scratching the back of a whole new voter bloc, who in turn were being offered the golden opportunity to dig deeper into your own pockets by putting their favorite candidate in office? Since we have established that voting is not a right, but rather it is a privilige, why not make people at least earn it? Why in the Hell should we be approaching people who will not attempt to take care of themselves or their own basic needs, saying, "Hey, how would you like to help choose our leaders?" It is absolutely absurd that people who have squandered their lives hanging out, living off welfare, sitting there with their cigarettes and beer or wine, who have failed to develop a work ethic of any type, who have learned from previous generations in their family that all you got to do is keep spewing out children, and living off government plunder, should count as much as the votes of those who have worked hard. Ok, I hear the rumbles starting. I can hear some of you getting all puffed up with your righteous indignations and you superior sense of morality, and screaming that I am an insensitive bastard. But, it's ok, my wife has called me an insensitive bastard for years. But deep inside you know I am right about this! There you are, having worked your asses off all your life to get what you have, and there is someone who has made a career of living off other people's money, and they get an equal say in who our leaders are? How much sense does that make? Remember the Constitution? Have you found the right to vote in there yet? Nope, and you will never find it in there! It is time we got away from this "right to vote" mentality and apply common sense!!!
     
     There is a sad fact about American voters. Most are clueless when it comes to understanding how our government is supposed to operate and just who really is running the show. More American men can name the two head coaches names from their state's two major universities than can name the two people who represent them in the US Senate. More American women can tell you who was crying on Dr. Phil's shoulder on friday than can name who their congressman is. My thought is that if you don't have a basic understanding of the workings of our government, or if you can't name those who can confiscate your wealth at will, and you can't name the people who have a tight grip on the exclusive right to use deadly force to accomplish their goals, then you have no business screwing up the works on Election Day. Just stay home, we saw what happened in 2008 when uninformed people were flooding the voting booths.
     One fair measure of the American electorate is the number of people who joyfully send their children off to the government to be educated. For a more thorough evaluation of the problem, look up the analysis of the problem issued by the Cato Institute on September 22, 2004. The report is titled, "When Ignorance Isn't Bliss. How Political Ignorance Threatens Democracy." In the report it is pointed out that voter ignorance "raises doubts about democracy as a means of serving the interests of the majority." Our founding fathrs understood this very well. That is why we don't have a democracy. it is why they spoke in such fearful terms of the concept of democracy. it is why they gave us a REPUBLIC instead - a government founded on human rights and laws, not on the dangerous principle of simple majority rule.
     Here are a few of the highlights from the report:
    
    You would think that most people would know that Congress passed a law creating a massive
     prescription drug for our Wizened Citizens. 70% had no idea.

     While most people know that our budget deficit has increased, 60% don't know that that rise is
     largely due to increased federal spending. ( Has to be Bush's fault....)
 
     Can you name either of your U.S. Senators? You should be proud of yourself if you can because
     70% of your fellow state residents can't. And it was asking for only one of the Senators names not
     both.

     Wouldn't you expect any well-informed voter to know which party controls the House of
     Representatives? You would be wrong with your answer of yes. Before the 2002 elections, fewer
     than 1/3 of voters polled could have told you that the Republican Party were running the show at
     that time.

     In 2004, our economy showed some rather large job gains. Yet, more than 60% of voters thought we
     had lost jobs that year.

Pretty hard to believe, huh? And that doesn't even scratch the surface of areas like the three branches of government and what the purpose of each branch is.
     As the report states, "The American electorate fails to meet even minimal criteria for adequate voter knowledge," adding that such ignorance "potentially opens the door for both elite manipulation of the public and gross policy errors caused by politicians' need to appeal to an ignorant electorate in order to win office."

OK I have to stop here to explain something. When voter ignorance is being said, it does not mean that the American voters are STUPID people. It means they are ignorant to the issues facing them and ignorant to the backgrounds of the candidates. I don't want anyone thinkung that I am referring to anyone as STUPID. After all, I am a PBR drinking, white liquor sipping, pork skin eating redneck, according to a wine drinker. Remember if you aren't a wine drinker then you are a ignorant scrapple eater, this according to a certain gay guy I have had a few heated discussions with in a political discussion group I belong to on Facebook. Now back to our blog.

     So here's where you get mad at me again, but, keep reading. My proposition is this: Instead of trying to increase the stock of knowledge, why not decrease the number of ignorant voters!!! Private businesses don't let ignorant employees decide company policy. Why should we allow ignorant voters set public policy?
    Now, don't give me any of that "right to vote" talk, we have proven that voting is a privilige, not a right, unless of course someone has a different copy of the Constitution than I have, or Obama and Congress has rewritten it over the weekend. We are free to set some standards as long as they don't descriminate against people for race, sex, or religion. I am all for a voter qualification test to be given each 4 years at the voter registration office in each county. Every 4 years you take the test and then you can vote in the elections for the following four years. What do you think?
      So this is where I will end the RIGHT TO VOTE discussion. i hope this has educated eveyone on the subject and tunwe in again. My next blog will be on the Government Indoctrination of Our Children in Government Schools. That one probably will cost me a friend or two also, but I am going to call it like I see it. After all what's the name of my blog? DON'T LIKE IT, DON'T READ IT!!!!!!

Until next time.....