Douglas C. Lyons The Sun-Sentinel

October 8, 2011
Douglas C. Lyons
The Sun-Sentinel

RE The joys and perils of voting – Some comments on your article in today’s Sun-Sentinel

Mr. Lyons,

Alas, when the only tool you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail.

In your article about the electoral process and how some people are always stuck on hind teat I come with a different perspective.

#1 – I was born and raised in Bayonne, NJ. That’s on the good end of Hudson County. Voting districts reporting 110% of registered voters casting ballots were not uncommon. I had an uncle who voted until June, 1971 despite having died in May, 1956. That he voted “Row ‘A’ All The Way” - The Regular Democratic Organization should not come as a surprise. I saw a Congressman’s mother engage in “voter suppression” in 1958. After she punched a hostile questioner in the mouth the Bayonne police dragged the Republican agent provocateur out of the back yard.

#2 – My wife had relatives in Chicago. I was there in 1971 when the original Mayor Daley – King Richard the First – responded to a question about his family’s insurance agency getting almost all its business from City Hall on a non-bid basis. [Maybe Halliburton was taking notes.] He leaned over the podium and said, “You can kiss my ass”. Yet one more endorsement of the First Amendment! There is a story – perhaps apocryphal, perhaps not – about Daley. As a practicing Catholic he sought to cleanse his soul before he died. His biggest regret was fixing the 1960 election for Kennedy. He had become convinced that if he had let Nixon win Vietnam would not have played out the way it did. Elections, even rigged ones, have consequences.

#3 – You say “Arguably there hasn’t been any real voter fraud in Florida since the 2000 election”. The unspoken assumption then becomes another example of modern American Liberal group think: Republicans were acting like they were Democrats from either Hudson County or Cook County or both.

Let’s begin with the hard, unforgiving fact. Correlation is not causality. In the unreal universe occupied by modern American Liberals it is a commonly accepted truth – does the phrase “settled science” fit there? - that for every victim there is a villain. These villains, all of whom were founding members of the “vast Right-Wing conspiracy” before founding the even more sinister “Tea Party”, conveniently fit the parameters of your premise. Everybody “knew” that 2000 election was fixed. If it weren’t for tautologies modern American Liberals would not be able to think at all.

I heard former mAL idol, Broward Sheriff Ken Jenne, AKA “Emperor Kenneth the Short”, now a convicted felon and ex-con who failed the Hudson County “Stand Up” Guy test because he set up his secretary to take the fall, tell Civil Rights Commissioner Mary Frances Berry that not only was there no fraud in Broward County in the 2000 election but that there were no reports of fraud or intimidation

. The Miami Herald reported in January 2001 that not one vote had been fraudulently cast in Florida save for one example. Almost 8,000 registered voters in Palm Beach County also voted in Queens County, New York. Queens, Brooklyn, and The Bronx do not collectively have 8,000 Republicans. Whom do you think those presumptive felons voted for?

#4 – You end by implying that there is a cabal of gun-toting “bitter clingers”, most of whom are named Bubba, who gather at a hunting club hard by Lake Jemoke and perpetually plot how to keep the Brothers from voting.

Perhaps I am showing my “cultural arrogance” but how does requiring a photo ID as a prerequisite for voting become racist? The United States Post Office requires a photo ID to pick up a certified letter. A photo ID is required for gaining admission to a hospital. If you try to open a bank account or get on an airplane without one the banker or the agent will trip the silent alarm.

As to “African American [voter] turnout” it seems to me that Jesse Jackson has made a very good living from the Democratic Party for the last 7 Presidential election cycles. Every 4 years he promises vast voter registration among African-Americans. Every 4 years the Democratic Party gives him a platform and a credit card. Wannabet that next year it will be 8 in a row? By the by, is he registering the same voters over and over again? Would comparing the voter lists and the obituary columns be racist?

I confess to a personal polling peccadillo. I got 6 separate voter ID cards when Miriam Oliphant ran the voting bureau in Broward County. I wanted to see if you could go home again. You can.

2 things more before moving on to more productive hackle raising and the never ending buckling of myriad swashes.

#1 – If people have the right to vote don’t they have the right not to vote? Maybe those who present themselves to the electorate are found to be wanting. Maybe I don’t like any of them. Didn’t Sadam Hussein get 99.4 % of the vote the last time he ran? The only pols to get a higher percentage were Castro, Brezhnev, and whatever the name of the fat little Gomer running the prison in North Korea is. Of course, if the Hudson County Democratic Party ran the election the people wouldn’t have to go to the polls. The totals would be in before Election Day. No more “Hanging Chads”.

#2 – A trait common to all modern American Liberals is that the link in the double helix chain that governs reason and allows for experience to count for something other than a reprise of Golden Oldies is missing.

Somehow it has settled into the modern American Liberal orthodoxy that more people voting will result in better mail service and nicer Motor Vehicle agents. Everybody voting will guarantee a kinder, gentler IRS. Maybe if we all march to the polls singing “Kumbaya” the earth will cool and the oceans will recede. You believe with all your heart that it everybody votes – as many times as is necessary - it will take just one more great “surge” to win the War on Poverty.

Do you remember when you couldn’t get a drink on Election Day?

Maybe we should buy a round before anyone votes.

It can’t be any worse.

“How sad of all the things that men endure
How few laws or kings can cause or cure.”






KEVIN SMITH
WARRIORBARDIT @BELLSOUTH.NET