Not so polite dinner conversation – Voting, religion and the usual PA nonsense

Went and voted today here in the primary election ofPennsylvania.  I had been registered independent but changed back to Democrat so I could participate.  In PA, we have a lot of what I suppose could be called DINOs, Democrats in name only, at least when it comes to women’s issues (Senator Bob Casey for one, who is fine for women to be forced to get ultrasounds, to be forced to carry pregnancies, but seems unable to figure out that those employers can now force their health care choices of *any* type on their employees. Bummer if his father had been told by his employer he couldn’t have had that transplant or the massive amounts of blood transfusions that go along with it covered by his health insurance).  I’m not a single issue voter but that is indeed a major litmus test when I choose a candidate. If you don’t respect me as a woman who can think for herself and make decisions for herself, then I don’t want you in office.  That’s makes you an idiot and not to be trusted with any decisions. 

We also have the new voter ID law here in PA.  It’s a test run now, but you have to show your photo ID to vote.  It’s been pretty amusing to watch the GOP and TP try to claim that there is wide-spread voter fraud and fail miserably to show it exists.  Even Fox News fails and they try ever-so hard.  It’s even funnier whenPennsylvania’s legislators are again caught flat-footed by their own ignorance about the bills they support.   The nice lady who works my polling place looked at my photo ID but I’m sure had no idea if I was really who I claimed, with the photo no longer that accurate anymore. It seems to be a rather useless measure designed to only frighten people and make it more difficult to exercise one’s right to participate in this representative democracy. 

With the new requirements for photo IDs for voting inPennsylvania, it seems that the separation between church and state should now have other advocates too.  When the state can decide whose religion is valid for any reason, be it that their adherents do not need to submit to having their photos taken, that they be tax-exempt, or that their followers have the rights to do with their bodies as they find acceptable, everyone’s freedom is in danger from atheists to Muslims, to Jews, to the most fundamentalist Christians. 

Unfortunately, many who have advocated for these voter IDs, to correct a claim of voter fraud that has not been shown to be a problem by either Attorney General Corbett or Governor Corbett’s administration, now are “shocked” that people’s rights are going to be under attack. For the article about this “surprise” click here: Religious questions for PA Voter ID law draw fire. Prior to this, it was fine for everyone to be forced to get this ID, no matter if it was a financial burden to our most vulnerable populations.  But when it came to religious freedom, to some of the most conservative populations, suddenly it has become an issue.    

This requirement for voter photo ID was flawed from the start.  This late concern for freedoms seems to underline that it was indeed intented as only a tool for restricting voters in certain populations.  If the state can determine that religions are valid using such arbitrary guidelines: number of adherents (a fallacy of appealing to popularity), if it has certain “acceptable” ceremonies, what “significant” requirements are acceptable, what affects on personal life are acceptable, then we are all facing a possibility of the bureaucracy and the  “majority” deciding this in other arenas as well. No one can consider themselves “safe”.