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IPFS News Link • Voting - Election Integrity

The Right to Vote Affects the Power to Choose

• http://www.commondreams.org, by Charlene Carruther
 

Since 1984, women have been the majority of the total vote in every presidential election. This year, millions of women will stand in line and prepare themselves to decide who will serve in state legislatures and in the U.S. Congress. They will decide who sits on the local school board and who becomes the next President of the United States. They will also decide who shapes the future of reproductive health and rights for all women in this country. The power to preserve and expand reproductive rights is inextricably tied the right to vote.

But what is power if your ability to leverage that power is stripped away?
 
That’s just what Republican-led state legislatures across the country are poised to do. Since 2010 state legislatures with Republican majorities have introduced and passed restrictive laws with the potential -- and many argue the intent -- of forcing widespread voter suppression, and to disenfranchise women, people of color, students, the elderly, and low-income communities.

1 Comments in Response to

Comment by Temper Bay
Entered on:

My grandfather was born in the 1880s.  A forward looking man he supported the Sufferage movement and argued hotly with the 'old men' of his area who complained women voted with their hearts, not their heads as they should, and giving them the vote was a bad idea.  Shortly before my grandfather died, himself an old man, and seeing his America now sliding down into a Socialist Welfare and ever controlling state he told me, sadly, "Those old men were right.  It was a very bad idea".   



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