“Just as Sedgwick County is closing polling places and encouraging people to vote in advance to avoid long lines, the Legislature has passed a bill that could make it more difficult to cast advance ballots.
Republican supporters said requiring the name and address of anyone who delivers another voter's ballot to the election commissioners office would guard against improprieties.
Democrats say it could discourage advance voting.
Sedgwick County plans to eliminate 146 of its 208 polling places.
"It's a bad time to start adding things to the voting envelope when we're shutting down polling places," said Rep. Tom Sawyer, D-Wichita.”
So if the state is 2/3rds Republican and the Democrats have put up no real challenge why do they need to make it harder for the common person to vote? Kansas is tipical of much of today’s country, moving towards a one-party country, were it becomes harder and harder to remove the party in power. The Republicans are loosing popularity, but they want to make sure only their people, wealthy and well educated, vote.
Even before the Democrats began to loose their control we have to wonder how much our vote counted anyway. The candidates were different, the issues were different, but little changes no matter who gets elected. The Democrats had trouble nominating an anti-war candidate, during Vietnam, until George McGovern ran and he was helped by Richard Nixon who wanted an easy candidate to beat.
So why do we vote and why do we need democracy? Are people like Kansas Representative Todd Tiahrt really bad to begin with or do they just give in to the system that encourages them to take large amounts of money, to keep their party going as well as making an easy living off of the taxpayers. They all do it, including many Democrats. So maybe it’s the system and not the people we elect.
In Germany, I was told that it didn’t matter who got elected, because nothing ever seems to change. So this is not just a US problem.
What do we really choose?
Does voting make any difference?
What is democracy? Surely it involves some choices. But if they have no meaning, why bother?
Does democracy really bring us freedom? If so how? The people elected only restrict our lives more, not less, and they always cost us more of our own money then offer us lower taxes in which most people don’t seem to notice any real rise in personal income.
Even in China, during the 1960s, Mao once tried to persuade the party to have contested elections for party leaders. The idea was rejected by the party. So besides the Marxist-Leninist definition of democracy, Mao and others realized there had to be more choices in government.
Today major corporations seem to have all the real power. The real question is how to get that power back to the people?
Is this kind of voting our future?
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