Anytime the US has an election things get interesting. The bi-polarism of their electoral system cannot help but stir up the country much like hot and cold air make a tornado in a trailer park. What I find interesting is the notion that one must be a citizen to be able to vote, and yet so many do not participate. What is it about citizenship that magically confers the right to determine who leads? And what is it about elections that makes people apathetic? Republican Governor Rick Scott stated “The right to vote is a sacred right, We gotta make sure a U.S. citizen’s right to vote is not diluted.” Diluted by illegal immigrant votes one presumes.
I wonder however what happened to “no taxation without representation”, which one will remember, was the rallying cry of the American Revolution. The Republicans recently started several dragnets to thwart Democratic leaning Hispanics and Blacks from voting for Obama. I guess if you can’t win ’em over with your billionaire policies you have to stop them from being able to vote in the first place. The dragnet turned up only one illegal immigrant, a Canadian, who had voted in 2004 and 2008 after moving to Florida. I would ask, why shouldn’t immigrants to able to vote? They get taxed, shouldn’t they get representation? Now I am not talking about people who enter the country through fraud or sneak in, but real landed immigrants.
Consider the amount of taxes paid by the GE corporation in 2010, $0.00. In fact it received a 3.2 billion dollar refund from the IRS. It has spent almost 12 million dollars lobbying in Washington so far in 2012. Clearly they have representation, in fact corporations have more represent than real people.
Here in Canada 3,100 people have been stripped of their citizenship because of fraudulant entries. The National Post reports, “Often facilitated by immigration consultants, this type of fraud has allowed foreigners to sponsor relatives and qualify for Canadian passports, benefits and the right to vote — all without ever having lived in Canada for any significant period.” Again that “right to vote” comes up. Considering that only61% of Canadians eligible to vote actually did in the last federal election. in the US, the last Federal election had about the same turnout. Compare that to Australia with a stunning 93.82%. My folks always told me, “If you don’t vote, you can’t complain.” Can you complain if you don’t have the right to vote?
I think in reality if we looked at why people become citizens, voting is fairly low on the list of reasons. I am pretty sure you will find things like security and opportunity are higher on the list. And there is nothing special about citizenship. Most of us didn’t do anything to earn it, we were simply born here. Anyone who lives in this country should have the ability to vote. If we tax them, they should have representation, but it should come with the expectation of participation.
Voting should be a sacred duty, not a sacred right.