By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
The Democratic legislative leadership is pushing new election “reforms” to boost the Garden State’s election day turnout, Save Jerseyans… and their own margins.
Think about it: there’s only one reason to push opt-out registration at the MVC (!) when you go to get a driver’s license (which you need to drive) but oppose common sense voter ID laws for the voting booth where the reckless can do a LOT more damage to society than you can with an automobile. Answer: steal votes, and then manipulates the ones you can’t steal.
It just so happens that taking advantage of ignorance is what Democrats do best.
And ignorance is New Jersey’s leading export at the moment thanks to years of gross mismanagement. Back in April, I shared with you the stunning results of a Stockton University survey that found, for example, 60% of New Jerseyans where unable to identify the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution as the Bill of Rights; only 29% of respondents identified freedom of speech as one of the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment.
Explain to me again why we want these people showing up at the polls? And by “we,” I’m referring to those of us NOT trying to steal elections. Answer: we shouldn’t. Not until they’ve smartened up.
Just like operating a motor vehicle, we place certain limits on the franchise of voting (e.g. the 18-year age requirement and residency rules) as a tacit acknowledgement of the fact that voting is NOT a good unto itself. I don’t care what MTV told you in the 1990s; voting is only a valuable exercise insofar as the person casting a ballot appreciate the value and gravity of the opportunity. Our culture is obsessed with its “rights” driven, in part, by the proliferation of court tv. In the mix we’ve forgotten that these God-given entitlements are also responsibilities.
The stakes for our republic couldn’t be higher. Our first Democrat president, Thomas Jefferson, said it best:
No government can continue good but under the control of the people; and… [t]heir minds are to be informed by education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue and to be deterred from those of vice… [t]hese are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure and order of government.”
His frenemy John Adams was far more succinct: “Liberty can no more exist without virtue… than the body can live and move without a soul.”
“Soulless” is as good a descriptor for Trenton as any I could dream up. Maybe rudderless? However you choose to describe the problem, it’s not one that’s going to be solved by people who don’t even know WHAT their rights are, let alone which policies/politicians are best suited to defend/advance them.
So if we want to save the body politic from further decay, Save Jerseyans, let’s quit this tiresome “rock the vote” bunk and retool our education system – and our culture – to promote smarter (read: “informed”) voting, not just simply more of it.
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Personally I’d like to see them stop the election tampering with the Sequoia machines and install the damned printers for a paper audit trail and so that voters can validate the votes are right.
be careful what you vote for…you many not be a quality voter.
If they focused on QUALITY voters – there would end up being very few democrats at the polls. The DEMOCRAT controlled NJ Legislature would NOT want that.
Dead and fictional voters cannot opt out.
Land owning white males only!