Challenging Votes is UnAmerican

There has been a lot of talk about unamerican activities recently. Apparently significant swaths of the country are self hating. who knew? There are real parts and virtual parts of our country. this is of course utter and complete fail. I do believe that there is one thing being done in a systematic way across the country that is truly and deeply unamerican. No its not voter registration fraud and no ACORN is not responsible. The idea of challenging people's right to vote and making them prove that they have the right strikes me as deeply and unfailingly unamerican.

There are few things more sacred in our country than the franchise. Voting in our country represents the ability of the populace to legitimize the government, to participate in the course of the country. People have died in the effort to allow minorities and women the right to vote in this country. Voting is not a burden on a citizen it is the defining right of citizens in a democracy. When that vote is challenged and that citizen is told that he does not have the right to vote unless he can prove that he does that is wrong.

The entire system that allows for American citizens of legal voting age to be forced into a "provision ballot" should be abolished. Provisional ballots are a system where a person is guilty until proven innocent. Based on a challenge with an incredibly low burden of proof we tell citizens that they cant vote unless they can prove they are ok. the burden of proof is totally on the wrong party in this action. In our country the burden of proof is on the prosecution and make no mistake thats what these vote challengers are, citizen prosecutors alleging crime. They should not be aided by this rebuttable presumption in their favor. If anything it should be the other way, a person is assumed to have the right to vote unless it can be shown beyond a reasonable doubt that they do not.

We know that systematic voter fraud does not happen in this country. the allegations of it are done with one purpose and one purpose only, to stop people from voting. The people that are inevitably stopped are the poor, the black, the brown. The people who need to vote the most because the policies of the government will affect them the most. To go around the country and tell these people they dont deserve to vote because of a scrivener's error flies in the face of the ideals of liberty and democracy.