Voting is a right and a privilege of sorts. Sure, a right we should all exercise. A privilege to a degree as well, because there are so precious few nations on the face of the earth whose social contracts permit just about everyone — no matter your background, creed, age, property, or education — to participate.
It is also a right you may decline to exercise. Plenty of people don’t own firearms. Plenty of people don’t own their own newspaper. People choose not to exercise certain rights every day.
Bob Holsworth over at Virginia Tomorrow dredges this tidbit up from the pages of the Virginia Pilot:
Bill Sizemore in The Virginian Pilot has a remakable story this morning about the “Know Campaign” that will be sending mailers to 350,000 Virginian households that will include your voting history and
That of your neigbors as well.
Debra Girvin, executive director of the Know Campaign, observed that “research shows that this tactic can drive people to the polls…we figured ‘let’s give it a try.’”
If you assume that the story isn’t an elaborate hoax (though in politics truth continually outpaces our fictional imagination), it’s pretty frightening.
Girvin won’t tell the reporter who the “we” that “figured ‘let’s give it a try’” are.
Nor will she reveal who’s in the organization or the foundation that’s purportedly paying $150,000 to fund the activity.
So much for transparency.
Now I ask you this: Does voter intimidation work both ways? Sure we’re familiar with the sort that drives folks away from the polls… but when that same coercion is used to put people beyond a comfort level in exercising a right (whichever one that may be), isn’t that problematic? Illegal, I dare say?
I’d be very interested in find out who the presupposed “donors” really are.