27 October 2012 | Why I Am Worried About Voting

For the first time in my voting life, I'm worried about Election Day.

Not because I don't know for whom I'm voting or lack a basic understanding of all the propositions on the ballot, but because of groups like True the Vote, which is, let's admit it, a voter intimidation group. I honestly fear that I will be confronted by a group like this when I go to vote.

I don't know why people are not more angered by this. The media keeps referring to "voter identification laws," but they're anything but. And I'm actually deeply offended that who's driving this are Republicans. They want to keep people from voting. If you think or act otherwise, well, that's a lie. A bald-faced lie.

I think of all those civil rights clips I watched growing up about people fighting for the right to vote, all those struggles. It's now a mockery because we have a new generation of bigots who want to go after minorities like myself (Hispanic male) and question my right to vote. If your response to that is some collective shrug with, "just show them your ID," well, you really are missing the point. Or just don't care. That's the way I am starting to conceive of our society: just not really caring.

It's made worse when I consider that we've sent soldiers to the Middle East to bring democracy and yet, people are actively working to prevent their own countrymen in the United States from voting. If I say it's perverse, that doesn't even begin to cover it. I truly don't understand how people can think of themselves as basically decent if they spend their waking hours planning to deny other people to right to vote. Or want to challenge people with ID requests when they have no right to do so in order to slow up the voting line and create a hostile environment so that people just leave.

I never toss this accusation around lightly, but groups like True the Vote are like the Nazi brownshirts of Germany in the 1930s. They're little agents of the SA harassing their countrymen because they don't want you to vote for the person you want to. And why this isn't causing more anger is beyond my comprehension.

Maybe nothing will happen when I go to vote. I hope not. But for the first time in my voting life, I feel like I'm going to be confronted by some white person who wants to question my right to vote because I'm Hispanic. There is something very wrong with this.