Thread by @mariliacout

1 / "Power grab", voting day holiday and mandatory voting

It took me a few minutes to understand what McConnell meant by "power grab". He was concerned that a measure intended to enforce the right to vote would be bad. Something didn't sound logical.
nyti.ms/2sZJKnx

2 / If a legal right is not being used by a group of citizens, some legal measure must fix this, correct? If it is a civil right, it is universal. If it is universal, it must be enforced. Right?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Ri…

3 / Maybe it's just me being a Brazilian and not getting the whole "right X duty" thing in the USA. You see, I come from a country where voting is not a "right" but rather a "duty" (it is mandatory and you are punished if you don't vote).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsor…

4 / This is confusing. I get the part that you may choose not to vote in the USA. But what happens if you want to exert your *right* to vote? I discovered that not all States grant employees paid time off to vote:
businessinsider.com/can-i-leave-wo…

5 / That sounded horrible. Then I learned that employers could create constraints on the time the employee could take to leave and vote. Obviously, I remembered the lines in voting stations and, again, felt something was not right.
aflcio.org/2016/11/5/know…

6 / I dug a little more and learned about the absentee ballot. Now that disturbed me. In Brazil, we can vote at Consulates and Embassies when out of the country. Otherwise, all you can do is go to the post office on election day and "justify" your absence (no punishment),

7 / The American "absentee ballot"
vote.org/absentee-ballo…

8 / And how it works:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absentee_…

9 / After all I learned, I concluded that of all the things that I disapprove of in Brazil, mandatory voting is not one. Now I believe that voting should:
- be mandatory
- enforced
- election day obviously a holiday (and dry law applied that day)
- strict monitoring of votes

10 / I go back to McConnell's characterization of universal voting rights enforcement as a "power grab" and it dawned on me, again (because it is so horrific that it's hard to believe), that the GOP are actively anti-democracy. Big time anti-democracy activists.

11 / Voting is one of the pillars of democracy. If anyone questions the enforcement of this right, there is no other interpretation: this agent, person, party, whatever is *working against democracy*.

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