Christian Leftist

Bring On the Fashion Police

My advice to voters in this election is this: if you wear campaign buttons, stickers or t-shirts on November 4th, bring a change of clothes. In general, ‘passive electioneering’ is legal on a county-by-county basis. Although the Supreme Court would probably overturn an outright ban on personal opinions covering one’s person, your knowledge of the law won’t help you to vote if poll officials deem you to be disturbing the peace or disrupting the political process. It’s great to make a legal stand — but the chances of winning a court case on civil rights may well depend on who you elect as our next president, so weigh your priorities carefully.

In Pennsylvania, for example, there is pending litigation on ‘passive’ and ‘active electioneering.’ Two poll workers filed a lawsuit against PA state because they want labels, pins, logos and slogans promoting specific campaigns to fall under the label of ‘passive electioneering’ and therefore be prohibited, even though that practice is not technically illegal if people wearing signs or advertisements make no efforts to influence peole inside the polls other than wearing political items. This follows an earlier decision by the PA State Supreme Court that says that poll works should use discretion and decide in each county what constitutes ‘active electioneering.’ The poll workers feel that the vague language forces them to be fashion police.

Hey, poll workers? Before you start yanking people’s pins off their lapels, you might want to enforce the law by keeping all of those taped yard signs off of the front of the church where I votes, because I know that’s within a hundred feet of the voting booths, and no one is standing there wearing them all day.

Voter Suppression

In Lake County, Indiana, voters might have had drive more than an hour to get to the polls early if it weren’t for a federal court appeal that lost on October 6th. Early voting is normally only allowed in a caounty clerk’s office. Around the county center, Crown Point, there are three suburbs along Lake Erie with more than 40 percent of the county’s total population that are more than an hour’s driving distance from that office. Although voters were allowed to go to “satellite” voting offices during the primaries, on Septermber 24th, two Republican election board officials voted against opening up satellite voting centers. The measure passed 3-2, but the county Republican Party argued that state law requires a unanimous vote to approve satellite voting, and they vowed to sue. The county Democratic Party responded that voting centers located in a county clerk’s office don’t fall under such jurisdiction. It was one big mess until a judge in federal court ruled that the early satellite voting could take place.

WINNERS: early voters.