15 Oct No polling places?

Yes, i just heard. Washington State is going to polling-place-free elections in February next year. I cringe. The families i work with in the non-profit children’s clinic where i work often can’t manage to stay in a home for more than a few months or a few years, at the most. Between gentrification forcing them to sell their homes, Section-8 being down-sized, the disappearance of regular work for our working-class families, ridiculous rent hikes in a bloated housing market, and general malaise of the market all equals moves for the families. And like the policy that takes a child off of state-funded medical coverage if a DSHS coupon is returned, there is a policy in place that takes American Citizens out of the registered voters rolls when their ballot is returned. As though the need and the right are no longer relevant or, even, present.

Whose bright idea was this, anyway?

What bothers me is that this is coming into the media not through the state level here in Washington, but on curious cases in other parts of the country. Not that they are not important. Particularly for the people who were victims of Hurricaine Katrina. I’m sorry, but when i lose my home and my history and my life, i don’t stop to think, “Oh yeah, i need to re-register to vote.” Yes, Americans are getting up in arms now, about the presidential race and vote. But i fear that the storm will subside after November 4, or at least January 21. What about the next referendum? The next city vote, county vote, state vote?

I think the biggest concern is that i can’t, for the life of me, figure out who to complain to. My right to grievances is great, but not if i don’t know where to start grieving.

My frustration, at the crux, is the constant re-marginalization of populations who are already lacking a voice. When did voting become the precious right of the upper-class, the moneyed-class? It brings us to questions of ‘right citizenship’…who IS a ‘right citizen’ anymore? How did we become such a country of exceptionalism? We talk about exceptionalism on the grand scale (Abu Ghraib, refugees), but never on the scale of our own people, our own citizens. Yes, our political system just keeps twisting. And even if we’re not looking the other way, we don’t know how to engage. We are on the verge of what Charles Taylor calls soft-despotism. It’s not in-your-face facism, but it is a slow and quiet take-over of our rights as we fail to meet our responsibilities as citizens to become involved politically. And before long, we are overwhelmed by the seeming insurmountability of it all – trapped in malaise of hopelessness against our own government.

Now that’s just depressing.