Thursday, March 26, 2009

How to steal democracy and disenfranchise people

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

After completely ignoring him ever since he got into the race, The Post-Star's print edition has finally decided to report on Libertarian Eric Sundwall.

The first article was related to his (eventually) unsuccessful fight to stay on the ballot... two weeks after the fight started and a day before it ended. The second and last article was a front page article on him being kicked off the ballot.

They also wrote a transparent editorial calling for him to be allowed in the ballot. It's transparent because it came nearly two weeks after his petitions were challenged. In other words, they waited to editorialize about it until they knew it wouldn't make a difference.

The editorial praising the importance of a diversity of voices was published on the same day as was held a debate co-sponsored by The Post-Star. Sundwall was not invited to this debate. The daily's actions speak a lot louder than their words.

The afforementioned article from today did detail the main reason Sundwall's petitions were rejected.

What was the reason that thousands of law-abiding Americans were disenfranchised? Did Sundwall's campaign get signatures from dead people? Did it get pages of signatures from illegal immigrants from Outer Mongolia?

No.

The majority of the signatures that the board threw out were because the individual who circulated the petitions and witnessed the signatures listed the hamlet of Manorville as his residence instead of the town of Brookhaven, where Manorville is located.

For locals, that's the equivalent of someone listing their residence as West Glens Falls instead of Queensbury.

One person wasn't even wrong in filling out one line of a form. He didn't lie or deceive. Quite the opposite. His 'crime' was that he was too precise. That was the justification for denying one law-abiding American his civic right to run for public office and for disenfranchising thousands of others.

How can any person with an ounce of conscience or patriotism justify this?

This is what happens when ordinary people, without personal fortune or oodles of corporate cash, tries to participate in the 'democratic' process.

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