Election Reform: The Fierce Urgency of Now

[AtLiberty]

The Fierce Urgency of Now

By Jean Kaczmarek,
co-chair Illinois Ballot Integrity Project DuPage Chapter
August 20, 2006

Eighty-six years ago yesterday, the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified giving women the right to vote after a 72-year battle.

Forty-three years later on a hot August day, Martin Luther King delivered his immortal “I Have a Dream” speech “to remind Americans of the fierce urgency of now.”

Here we are, 43 years later on another August day, faced with the unfinished work of civil rights in our electoral process, to also “dramatize an appalling condition.”

The heart of election reform is a matter of civil rights. When our votes are not counted, all of us are strapped in a chair and force fed with iron clamps and tubes, all of us are plastered with fire hoses with a force which strips bark off trees, all of us are sitting at the back of the bus.

*snip*

King preached that our destiny and freedom were inextricably bound with one another. This room is filled with a melting pot of passions…the environment, education, security, health care, the economy, jobs, privacy, assistance to the least among us, peace -- each bound with one another and each with high stakes on election day.

To move forward with all our goals, we must first come together and accomplish…one goal.

*snip*

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1693&Itemid=113