(1/14) This election proves the need for a right to vote
(2/14) America needs an absolute right to vote, like most other major democracies.
(3/14) One legacy of slavery is that our Constitution does not contain an absolute right to vote for all citizens who have achieved the age of majority.
(4/14) Our property rights are totally intact. If the government wants to take away your house or your car because, for example, you didn’t pay your taxes, they have to go to court to do it.
(5/14) Our gun rights are strong. If the government wants to take away your guns, they have to go to court and prove their case in front of a judge.
(6/14) Our marriage rights are solid, at least until Amy Coney Barrett weighs in on the Supreme Court. If a government official tries to deny you a marriage license, that person can be sued or, in some states, even go to jail.
(7/14) Our free speech rights have been so expanded that the Supreme Court has ruled that if billionaires want to buy politicians, that is totally legal and considered “free speech.“
(8/14) Our right to due process is still respected in America. If the government wants to put you in jail, they have to go before a jury of your peers and prove their case.
(9/14) Voting, however, is not and never has been a right in America. Which is why the largest part of the Republican election strategy this year has been to prevent people from voting, and to try to block their vote from being counted after it’s been cast.
(10/14) Because we do not have a right to vote, the Postmaster General can delay your ballot without worrying about going to jail, and Republican politicians across the country can pass laws making it harder and harder for you to vote or have your vote counted.
(11/14) Taking away our votes should be as tough a job for Republicans as taking away our homes or our guns.
(12/14) America needs a 28th Amendment that establishes an absolute right to vote for all citizens who’ve achieved the age of majority.
(13/14) While we’re working on that, we need laws that assert the right to vote in such emphatic language that courts can enforce it and reverse decades of Republican voter suppression.
(14/14) Only then can America call itself a functioning democratic republic.

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More from @Thom_Hartmann

4 Nov
(1/11) There’s a reason this election is this close. The old saying is, “Own the media, own the country,” and this election proves it true.
(2/11) Democrats have been totally stupid when it comes to the information wars. While Republicans built an enormous national “talk to people all day, every day, all year“ media infrastructure, Democrats only pour money into advertising once every four years.
(3/11) In the 1970s and 1980s, conservatives began building out an intellectual infrastructure to seize control of the political narratives in America.
Read 11 tweets
2 Nov
(1/16) Will America embrace or reject fascism in 2020?
(2/16) Fascists build walls, like they did around East Germany. Donald Trump is building a new, unscalable wall around the White House today, and the Republican party has spent the past four years celebrating a wall on our southern border.
(3/16) Fascists divide and imprison people based on ideology and race. Trump and the Republicans have put children in cages after tearing them away from their mothers, and built out a private for-profit prison system to hold refugees of color.
Read 16 tweets
29 Oct
(1/26) On April 18, Bob Woodward recorded Jared Kushner saying that Trump had taken control away from the doctors and was going to open the country back up. Why then? What was happening right around that time?
(2/26) Trump’s official national emergency declaration came on March 11, and most of the country shut down or at least went partway toward that outcome. The economy crashed and millions of Americans were laid off, but saving lives was, after all, the number one consideration.
(3/26) Trump put medical doctors on TV daily, the media was freaking out about refrigerated trucks carrying bodies away from New York hospitals, and doctors and nurses were our new national heroes.
Read 26 tweets
28 Oct
(1/21) The Republican Party is an organized gang of sociopaths.
(2/21) Trump doesn’t care how many people in Omaha are stuck for hours in the freezing cold, over 3 miles from the nearest road or parking lot, after he’s left his rally, putting some in the hospital. And he clearly doesn’t care how many people die of Covid.
(3/21) One of the defining characteristics of a sociopath is that they view themselves as the only “real“ humans on the planet, and everybody else is basically a prop in the amazing story of their lives.
Read 21 tweets
27 Oct
(1/18) The Supreme Court has awesome power, and now that there’s a 6-to-3 right-wing majority, they’re preparing to use that power like a sledgehammer. …
(2/18) In 2000, they put popular-vote-loser George W. Bush into the White House, and Brett Kavanaugh just signaled to Donald Trump that he’s enthusiastic to be part of a second such effort. …
(3/18) They single-handedly decided that corporations should have the rights of persons, and that billionaires and big corporations should be able to legally own politicians. …
Read 19 tweets
26 Oct
(1/22) In America, the country that is supposed to be the world’s premier democratic republic, citizens do not have an absolute right to vote. …
(2/22) Because we don’t have a right to vote, red state governors can radically cut back on the number of polling places and voting machines so that working class people are forced to stand in line for five, six, in some cases 10 hours to vote. …
(3/22) Because we don’t have a right to vote, about 30 million voters nationwide have been removed from the voting rolls since 2014, so when they show up to vote they’re given “provisional ballots“ that, in red states, are almost never counted unless there is a lawsuit. …
Read 22 tweets

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