Freedom triumphs again in Florida!

[Brittain33]

No, and I don't support changing current election laws in Florida.....but I still don't see why blacks aren't just as capable as whites of going to vote on Election Day or during the somewhat shorter early voting period or requesting an absentee ballot.

Working in jobs, or taking care of kids, which doesn't allow for the free time that seniors have on a Tuesday.

[Brittain33]

No, and I don't support changing current election laws in Florida.....but I still don't see why blacks aren't just as capable as whites of going to vote on Election Day or during the somewhat shorter early voting period or requesting an absentee ballot.

Working in jobs, or taking care of kids, which doesn't allow for the free time that seniors have on a Tuesday.

Wait, we did those things and never missed a vote.  Or are you being sarcastic?

I work and have no trouble voting, but it varies a lot by what kind of job you do and where you live. Pennsylvania polls are open an hour later than those in Florida. Is it possible to imagine that some people work in lower-level jobs where transportation and child care make it hard to get to the polling booth? It's one reason states like KY and IN shut their voting down so early in the evening, and also why (for opposite reasons) Michigan unions make election day a holiday.

[Brittain33]

Well, that's a risk you have to take in a democracy, no?

It's interesting how members of different parties draw difference conclusions from krazen's statement. For him, it's a sign that low-income people should be discouraged from voting through indirect means like this. For me, it points up how our defense budget has gotten enormous because contractors can "vote themselves the treasury" by making donations to politicians and providing lucrative second careers to them as lobbyists.

[Brittain33]

In a society with an uneven distribution of wealth--like, say, France in the 18th century, or Hanover England--you can limit the franchise to people with extensive property and income to prevent people from "voting themselves the public purse," and then you will have a government that serves its electors by preventing the poor from accumulating property or income and threatening the status and relative affluence of the elites. Perhaps by reserving superior education for those with property, taxing labor at the expense of capital, passing anti-vagrancy laws, and building walls around the elite caste using licenses and such. This is a far more common story in history than a democracy leading a country to ruin, I think, and one where the median level of human happiness is much closer to "miserable serf" than "ok, could be better."