State Rep. John Kavanagh, who chairs the the Government and Elections Committee in the Arizona House, says not everyone should be voting, and the “quality of votes” matters. One of the nation’s top voting rights experts is blasting that rhetoric, suggesting it’s racist, “straight out of Jim Crow.”
“There’s a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans,” Kavanagh, a Republican, said, as CNN reports. “Democrats value as many people as possible voting, and they’re willing to risk fraud,” he claimed, not only without any proof, but falsely. While there are relatively few voter fraud and election fraud cases across the country, those who have committed these crimes are almost always Republicans.
“Republicans are more concerned about fraud,” Kavanagh claimed, “so we don’t mind putting security measures in that won’t let everybody vote — but everybody shouldn’t be voting.”
“Not everybody wants to vote, and if somebody is uninterested in voting, that probably means that they’re totally uninformed on the issues,” Kavanagh added, again, without merit. “Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of […]
It sounds like this fellow is echoing much of the thought prevalent in the time of the “founding fathers.” That fundamental distrust of the people by the “founding fathers” class is why people do not actually vote for president but vote for “electors”, why voting rights were only for propertied white males and why the senate and supreme court were appointed and not elected at all.
It also helps explain why our laws were inherited from the English system and as an outgrowth why corporations are people.
If we decide to we can actually have a democracy, a real democracy. But we have to remember that democracy depends on trust and respect for others.
I am ashamed to say it but I have some members of my family (which is a very big one) say they do not vote because they think that nothing changes no matter who they vote for because those running for election are all the same meaning those running are rich and do not care about the poor and disadvantaged.