Voter Suppression: The Biggest BS Of All

One of the most interesting thing I noticed this election cycle was the huge, exhaustive effort the various groups employed to essentially suppress voter turn-out. Voter suppression is a tactic as old as voting itself. The idea is to get your opponents supporters to not vote by any means possible. While out-right suppressive techniques are illegal, less obvious tactics are in a bit more of a grey area on the legality scale, and with nameless corporations and "super PACs" now able to spend endless money, these murky techniques are starting to show as the new par.

No Votes En Nevada

The most obvious voter suppression effort this election cycle happened in Nevada. A group posing as concerned Latino voters spent a good amount of money on a campaign to convince other Latino voters to simply not vote. Their supposed philosophy was that since none of the candidates had done anything to actually help Hispanic voters, voters should not support the candidates with their votes. Sounds reasonable enough, right? I mean, why vote if you don't think any of the candidates will help you?

Perhaps that would make sense if the vast majority of Hispanic Nevadans were not registered Democrats on course to vote Democrat again. And maybe it would make sense if the organization behind the push wasn't run by former members of various different Republican campaigns. When put into that light, it becomes a bit more disturbing. This organization was blatantly trying to convince Latino people to give up their right to vote because with less people voting Democrat, the Republican candidate would have a much better chance to win the election.

The truly amazing thing about it? There's not a damn thing that can be done about it. Per the Supreme Court, this private organization has the right to spend unlimited amounts of money on the campaign, regardless of the former ties to any related campaign and regardless of their obvious attempts at voter suppression.

Ooops... Did I Give You The Wrong Address?

What else did I see? A new way to vote was introduced this year to many Illinois voters: vote by mail! No need for absentee ballots, this was billed as another convenient way to due your patriotic duty. Here in Chicago, one particular organization was passing out information to people downtown with registration cards that you could quickly fill out and mail in to get registered. It was even postage paid, how easy is that?! Except that the address on the included envelope was not the correct address for voter registration… minor details.

Potentially thousands of Chicagoans sent off their "voter registration" so they could vote on their own time, but they never received their mail-in ballot. Many of those likely did not vote at all because they just never got their voting information. This all could have been just a mistake on the printing organization's part… but it's not likely. The organization claims they were receiving the registrations at their office so they could enter the voter information into their database and then forwarding those registrations on the the correct office. Right... I'm sure every one of those registrations made it to the correct office in time...

No Homo... Seriously

Something a bit more close to home was a campaign that "organically" popped up just a few weeks ago. Many gay blogs, and national news media outlets, were floating the idea of not voting at all as a protest to our Democratic overlords for not acting on enough of our causes. I use the "" because there's pretty much no reason for this argument to come up, particularly on the politically focused and active blogs I read. Yet there it was: Gays shouldn't vote because none of the candidates are supporting us.

It's very interesting when you see the statistics that LGBT folk, by and large, vote 75% Democrat. Yet all of the sudden, people within the movement were advocating a non-vote. Hmmmm...

Is this sounding familiar?

Stop Whining And Frackin' Vote Already

Were there Liberal groups doing this same thing to the Conservative base groups? Were churches hearing that they shouldn't vote because neither candidate was supportive of their causes? I honestly have no clue. I don't live in right-wing land, and I'm not a Conservative, so I'm not in a position to know, but I wouldn't be surprise. What is clear to me is that the large machine behind the parties were convinced that the best way to win an election was not to offer up a compelling case for your candidate, but to just stop your opponents supporters from expressing the voting rights. That is really, really sad.

If there's any take away from this it is this: If someone is telling you not to vote, you should question their motives. If someone is telling you they are considering just not voting, you should question their decision-making process. Your vote is the ONLY actuall chance you have at affecting policy. Sure, you can write angry letters to your Senator, or protest in front of your Governor's office, but NOTHING is more effective in showing support or disdain than showing up to your polling place and casting your vote. Yes, it's only one vote, but your one vote is your only real voice in this democracy. Don't let someone else suppress your voice simply because it doesn't agree with their opinion of the world.

Celebrate And Educate

This weekend, I had the honor of attending a very good friend's wedding. My boyfriend and I were invited and accepted the invitation and were excited to go for many reasons, including that the ceremony was held at the Krohn Conservatory in Cincinnati. The Conservatory is a big plant life repository, packed full of rare flowers and trees, complete with a room full of Bonsai Trees! To say that the Conservatory was an excellent venue for the wedding is just an understatement.

What I want to say is that it's a totally different thing to attend a wedding as a single person versus a person in a relationship, at least for me it was. Previous weddings I've attended were nice and all, but most of them didn't spark much in me. But this wedding, as with another one we attended a few months back, meant something more to me. It dawned on me that weddings aren't just to celebrate the happy couple, but they help all couples celebrate the idea of love, and there's something magical about that.

Ok, sure, that's a bit sappy. But this is where this spins a bit: Knowing and understanding that aspect of the wedding ceremony provides me with a deeper understanding of why Social Conservatives and Anti-Gay Pricks want to deny us our right to legal marriage. They believe that if we aren't legally allowed to wed in the eyes of the state, we won't celebrate our love. If we don't celebrate our love, we'll continue to be ashamed of it. And if we're ashamed of it, we'll go away.

That's why this fight for Marriage Equality is so important. Our love is real and deserves to be celebrated just as much as any one else's. It seems trivial, but psychologically if we are told that are relationships aren't "legal," then we are more likely to not celebrate them and embrace them. It's a twisted little game.

The oddest thing I learned from the wedding though is that there are some people that are still unaware of the LGBT community's struggle for Marriage Equality. A friend of mine was completely in the dark when it came to what DOMA is and what it means. He also was unaware that Marriage between same-sex couples was only allowed in a handful of states across the county. I didn't know how to react to learning this because to me, this issue seems to be the forefront issue right now. But so many people and potential supporters are still completely in the dark about our struggle.

We have to keep educating people. No matter how close your friends are, please take the time to make sure they are up on the issue of Marriage Equality. Many of these people that are clueless are our supporters, they just need to know that there is an issue that we need their help with.