Published in the Des Moines Register and obviously a BAD opinion!

From Today's Inbox: English only is a bad law
April 7, 2008


District Judge Douglas Staskal’s ruling that only English can be on voter-registration forms should not be surprising. A bad law, passed to placate a noisy minority, has bad consequences.


The history of the United States is a history of grudgingly extending the right to vote. In the beginning, only white, propertied males could vote. Blacks, women, Native Americans, the handicapped, reformed felons, the illiterate and non-English-speaking citizens have had to fight for the right to vote, and other rights, to which they are entitled.

Let’s face it, we may claim to be a democracy, but we don’t act like it. Democracies do everything to ensure that citizens can vote. In the United States, we do so much to deny that right. We vote on a weekday. We pass laws to stop virtually nonexistent voter fraud. We make registration difficult. And more.

This is a serious problem. The right to vote is crucial to citizen participation. Our behavior, through much of our history, suggests we don’t trust citizens. We demand that so-called nondemocratic countries hold elections. Yet we seem to be the ones who are anti-democratic.

Some think that our democracy is best served when it is hard to exercise it. But excluding citizens is the biggest risk of all.

— Jon Torgerson,
Urbandale.
http://tinyurl.com/3wjo99