Voting is a right, not a privilege

THANKS TO the Editorial Board for the attention you’ve focused on the issue of voter suppression and our lawsuit over the state Personnel Director’s misinterpretation of state law governing voting leave for state employees in municipal elections.

You say we should not be paid to do our civic duty. We say that no one, including us, should ever be required to pay to exercise their voting rights.

You say we have plenty of opportunity to vote early, or on Election Day. We remind you that early voting was restricted to weekdays, and for many of us our work schedules and workloads, due to widespread understaffing, required us to use our earned leave, or take leave without pay, to vote in this year’s city election. The key word is earned. Arbitrarily denying us administrative leave to vote in municipal elections is, in effect, a specific form of poll tax, with an undeniable chilling effect on our corner of the electorate. Given the historically low turnouts in city elections, this constitutes targeted voter suppression . ... You advance a number of other arguments, and allegations, ranging from institutional obsolescence to excessive scope to abuse and lack of accountability — the latter on the heels of a rather sketchy description of the very method of accountability that you subsequently deny exists. We say that your arguments are largely specious, completely disingenuous and motivated wholly by partisan interest in the outcome of the pending runoff.

Voting, you say, is a privilege. We beg to differ. Voting is a right. More, it is the fundamental right that all other rights, duties and privileges are based upon.

DAN SECRIST Executive Vice President, Steward CWA, Local 7076