by Kevin Stoda, who has been a victim of having his vote taken away many times
It hurts so bad, it has shaken my soul at times--when my vote was excluded....
Many people who have not had their name removed from a voter role in less than 2 or 3 years by either a county or a city voter registrar will never understand how unfair that is to me (or other victims like me)....
It hurts so bad, I am numb or sense I have no identity before the government in my own land.
Many who have never had a vote of their own thrown out because of a smudge or half-torn chad will never understand"..
I have had a vote thrown out if mine thrown out because a check mark was half-of-a-half of a millimeter outside a box. Have you? Probably, some 20+% of all American votes are challenged, tossed out or not counted each and every election, America......
It makes the participation in voting seem ludicrous or like a charade of Democracy from our high school days onwards. No wonder many have apathy about even showing up to vote at such young ages.....
Many others who have never worried about electronic voting machines being rigged or not having paper copies, simply don't understand what some 20% or more of their fellow Americans think or anticipate based on bad experiences with data and computers.....
How nice it must be able to ignore the facts on the ground of so many ailing other Americans.
Many who have never voted from overseas (as I have)--i.e. whose votes were often never counted at all--do not understand how mistreated we as Americans and as human beings we feel....
I could continue and declare that change will come, but I doubt it, i.e. until more real Americans care more about the disadvantaged of this land and how we want to move beyond ritual of democracy and on to real democracy.
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