Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Abraham Lincoln on Voting

When faced with waiting in line to vote or getting your vote challenged, Republicans are hoping that people will just get frustrated and leave. I don't think they are right. People care this time. They know it counts. They will vote, even if unlike rich Republicans these people have jobs with boss-like substances who want to dock you for coming in late.

But the will of the people won't be denied. The people will see through these voting suppression techniques as the desperate tactic that they are.

Listen folks, you need to look upon any suppression of voting by "challenges" as what they really are, Fear of your power. Your vote is one of the few things they can't buy, trick or legislate away. They want to remove your power because they know that you will remove them from office if you know the truth and vote.

How strong is the will of the people to vote? We held elections during the civil war.

Here is what Lincoln had to say on the topic.

Lincoln on the 1864 Presidential Election
Response to a Serenade
November 10, 1864

It has long been a grave question whether any government, not too strong for the liberties of its people, can be strong enough to maintain its own existence in great emergencies.
On this point the present rebellion brought our republic to a severe test; and a presidential election occurring in regular course during the rebellion added not a little to the strain. If the loyal people, united, were put to the utmost of their strength by the rebellion, must they not fail when divided, and partially paralized (sic), by a political war among themselves?

But the election was a necessity.

We can not have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us. The strife of the election is but human-nature practically applied to the facts of the case. What has occurred in this case, must ever recur in similar cases. Human-nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak, and as strong; as silly and as wise; as bad and good. Let us, therefore, study the incidents of this, as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged.

But the election, along with its incidental, and undesirable strife, has done good too. It has demonstrated that a people's government can sustain a national election, in the midst of a great civil war. Until now it has not been known to the world that this was a possibility. It shows that, even among candidates of the same party, he who is most devoted to the Union, and most opposed to treason, can receive most of the people's votes. It shows also, to the extent yet known, that we have more men now, than we had when the war began. Gold is good in its place; but living, brave, patriotic men, are better than gold.

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