POLITICS: GOP comes up short

Take heed, folks. Our right to vote is not so slowly being eroded. A definite pattern of restricting voting rights is continuing in Idaho under its Republican "leadership."

1) A few months ago a move was afoot to support repeal of the 17th Amendment which provides for the direct election of U.S. Senators. Without that amendment the state legislature would choose our Senators, not us, voting citizens. What are the Republicans afraid of?

2) Last year the Republican Party fought in court to prevent non-Republicans from voting in the primary election for Republican candidates. (The purpose of the primary election is to weed out the field of multiple candidates from the same party, to choose one candidate from each party to run in the general election.) Arguing their right to freedom of association, they won in the Idaho Supreme Court. So now Idaho citizens, in order to vote in the primaries, will be required to register their party affiliation. (That means, in order to vote for Republican candidates, you must register as a Republican. You may register as "unaffiliated" but that means you will vote only for candidates running in non-partisan races such as judges, city councilmen and commissioners.) Each party has the option of inviting unaffiliated and other party voters to vote its ballot in the primary. Which party do you suppose will exercise that option? Certainly not the Republicans. What are the Republicans afraid of?

3) Just a few days ago, the new Kootenai County Clerk, under the guise of cost-cutting and security, issued a directive that restricts early voting to the Kootenai County Courthouse in Coeur d'Alene, and discontinues the long-used option of the various city halls in the county. (By the way, the long-posted sign in the elections office that said "Gatekeepers of Democracy" has been removed.) What are the Republicans afraid of?

4) While our former county clerk was still in office, he along with most of the other county clerks in the state supported a move to permit vote by mail (i.e. at each election, a ballot is sent to each registered voter - as is currently done in our neighbor state of Washington - to be completed at their leisure in the privacy of their own home.) Of course, this effort got nowhere in the Idaho state legislature. What are the Republicans afraid of?

The answer, of course, is that Republicans are afraid of democracy and of Democrats. Voting is the quintessential democratic act. In addition, when voting rights and voting access is restricted, Democratic voters are usually the ones most affected. How many of you would rather not vote than declare yourself a member of a particular party? Doesn't that restrict your right to vote? Perhaps the Republicans are really working to return us to the "original intent" of the framers of our venerable Constitution: Only white, male property owners (i.e., rich) have the right to vote?

PAULA NEILS

Hauser