Missouri Secretary of State (!) faced INTIMIDATION tactics at voting polls!
ELECTION DAY 2006 is here, and all across the nation, at rural districts and in crowded, busy city precincts, American voters are turning out to provide SOME DEMOCRATIC RESTRAINT on the TOTALITARIAN POWERS claimed (and exercised) by the Republican Party under the Bush administration.
UNLIKE John Kerry in 2004, Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, has taken an ACTIVE, aggressive stance in DEFENDING VOTING RIGHTS of American voters. Secretary Carnahan went to a polling place as an "average American voter," and CONTESTED the poll workers demand that she PRODUCE A PHOTO-ID.
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Unfortunately in the two or three decades since the chaotic 1960s, the Democratic Party has lost the media high ground in the eternal battle of "good governance" vs. authoritarian centralization of weatlh and power. For the vast majority of human history, governments and rulers have been a case of winner take all, where dictatorial kings, rulers, and would-be emperors could kill (execute) anyone under their domain with a simple wave of the hand. Norman warlord William the Conqueror (previous to his conquest of England known as "William the Bastard") had this absolute power of life and death over all England after his conquest of that island nation in 1066, but within the next half-dozen centuries, the people of England, Europe, and America sought to bring about RESTRAINTS on the totalitarian powers of their ruthless autocrats, culminating in the DECLARATION of INDEPENDENCE signed in 1776, wherein the American colonists proclaimed their "rights" to "dissolve the political bonds" that tied them to their king, and to instead institute a form of government "DERIVING [its] JUST POWERS FROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED."
Amazingly, although America's revolutionary experiment in "LIBERAL DEMOCRACY" was a continuation of increasing freedoms from the "Age of Enlightenment" on, and even though the great experiment in democracy has been THE ONLY major historical alternative to the absolute powers of kings, conquerors, and ruthless rulers, for the past decade Republican candidates and media-meisters have been able to make "LIBERAL DEMOCRATS" a synonym for curse words!
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WE SALUTE Missouri Secretary of State ROBIN CARNAHAN, and all the other courageous Democratic candidates, voters, and activists, who are seeking to provide honest REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT for American citizens, and who are today trying to RESTORE to America the unique principle that government should derive its "JUST POWERS" from "the CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED," and not from bullying, smear-mongering, propaganda tactics of authoritarian demagogue wannabes.
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Missouri elections chief in election dispute with poll worker
By DAVID A. LIEB, Associated Press Writer
Mon Nov 6, 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061107/ap_on_el_ge/voter_identification
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - Missouri's chief elections official said Monday she was asked for photo identification at the voting booth despite a court ruling striking down the requirement.
"I'm guessing this may be happening in other parts of the state," warned Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, a Democrat who had opposed Republican efforts to mandate a photo ID in Missouri.
She said that a worker at the St. Louis Election Board asked her three times to show photo ID when she went to cast an absentee ballot Friday.
Carnahan said that she tried to explain a photo ID was not necessary, but that the election worker replied that she was instructed to ask for one anyway. Carnahan said she eventually was allowed to vote without displaying a photo identification.
"To have that experience personally was very troubling," she said.
The Missouri Supreme Court last month upheld a lower court's ruling overturning a law that would have required voters to show a photo ID issued by the state or federal government.
Scott Leiendecker, the Republican director of the St. Louis Election Board, said he immediately addressed the issue after Carnahan told him about it. The employee said she had asked Carnahan for a form of identification and indicated that a photo ID is typically what people show, but did not demand a photo ID, Leiendecker said.
"I respect the secretary very much, she's a very nice lady, but I'm sorry about what she seems to think of us," he said.
St. Louis election workers are trained to mention a photo document as one option for identification, Leiendecker said, but not to require it.
UNLIKE John Kerry in 2004, Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, has taken an ACTIVE, aggressive stance in DEFENDING VOTING RIGHTS of American voters. Secretary Carnahan went to a polling place as an "average American voter," and CONTESTED the poll workers demand that she PRODUCE A PHOTO-ID.
----------------------------
Unfortunately in the two or three decades since the chaotic 1960s, the Democratic Party has lost the media high ground in the eternal battle of "good governance" vs. authoritarian centralization of weatlh and power. For the vast majority of human history, governments and rulers have been a case of winner take all, where dictatorial kings, rulers, and would-be emperors could kill (execute) anyone under their domain with a simple wave of the hand. Norman warlord William the Conqueror (previous to his conquest of England known as "William the Bastard") had this absolute power of life and death over all England after his conquest of that island nation in 1066, but within the next half-dozen centuries, the people of England, Europe, and America sought to bring about RESTRAINTS on the totalitarian powers of their ruthless autocrats, culminating in the DECLARATION of INDEPENDENCE signed in 1776, wherein the American colonists proclaimed their "rights" to "dissolve the political bonds" that tied them to their king, and to instead institute a form of government "DERIVING [its] JUST POWERS FROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED."
Amazingly, although America's revolutionary experiment in "LIBERAL DEMOCRACY" was a continuation of increasing freedoms from the "Age of Enlightenment" on, and even though the great experiment in democracy has been THE ONLY major historical alternative to the absolute powers of kings, conquerors, and ruthless rulers, for the past decade Republican candidates and media-meisters have been able to make "LIBERAL DEMOCRATS" a synonym for curse words!
*********************
WE SALUTE Missouri Secretary of State ROBIN CARNAHAN, and all the other courageous Democratic candidates, voters, and activists, who are seeking to provide honest REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT for American citizens, and who are today trying to RESTORE to America the unique principle that government should derive its "JUST POWERS" from "the CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED," and not from bullying, smear-mongering, propaganda tactics of authoritarian demagogue wannabes.
=================================================
Missouri elections chief in election dispute with poll worker
By DAVID A. LIEB, Associated Press Writer
Mon Nov 6, 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061107/ap_on_el_ge/voter_identification
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - Missouri's chief elections official said Monday she was asked for photo identification at the voting booth despite a court ruling striking down the requirement.
"I'm guessing this may be happening in other parts of the state," warned Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, a Democrat who had opposed Republican efforts to mandate a photo ID in Missouri.
She said that a worker at the St. Louis Election Board asked her three times to show photo ID when she went to cast an absentee ballot Friday.
Carnahan said that she tried to explain a photo ID was not necessary, but that the election worker replied that she was instructed to ask for one anyway. Carnahan said she eventually was allowed to vote without displaying a photo identification.
"To have that experience personally was very troubling," she said.
The Missouri Supreme Court last month upheld a lower court's ruling overturning a law that would have required voters to show a photo ID issued by the state or federal government.
Scott Leiendecker, the Republican director of the St. Louis Election Board, said he immediately addressed the issue after Carnahan told him about it. The employee said she had asked Carnahan for a form of identification and indicated that a photo ID is typically what people show, but did not demand a photo ID, Leiendecker said.
"I respect the secretary very much, she's a very nice lady, but I'm sorry about what she seems to think of us," he said.
St. Louis election workers are trained to mention a photo document as one option for identification, Leiendecker said, but not to require it.
posted by verifi at 9:45 AM
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