Officials Protect Democracy From Voters

Democracy enthusiasts gathered by the thousands at the Lincoln Memorial on Friday, openly demanding that ordinary citizens be permitted to influence elections. The “Defend the Vote” March, organized by the Rev. Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King III to mark the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington, followed an April Supreme Court ruling weakening Voting Rights Act protections and giving Southern states broader discretion to draw congressional maps. Protesters objected to the cherished American practice of lawmakers selecting their voters before voters can irresponsibly select their lawmakers.

Sen. Bernie Sanders warned that voting rights face their gravest threat since segregation, alarming election officials who have spent decades perfecting a system in which casting a ballot combines the paperwork of a mortgage application with the scheduling convenience of a parole hearing. President Donald Trump condemned the march’s radical insistence on representative government. “Nobody has ever seen voting pushed like this, with thousands of people demanding their votes be counted, sometimes even for candidates the government did not choose,” Trump said. “Politicians know the best voters, and letting everybody participate would be very unfair to democracy.”

Marchers also opposed voter-roll purges, restrictions on mail and early voting, and congressional districts designed to place neighboring houses in separate political civilizations. Their demands threatened a thriving election-administration industry employing consultants, lawyers and mapmakers who explain why one apartment building must be divided among four districts to preserve community integrity. Officials reassured the public that merely possessing the right to vote does not mean anyone will be allowed to use it casually. Citizens must still locate the correct polling place, survive registration challenges, produce precisely approved identification, wait through strategically distributed lines and avoid having their neighborhood reassigned whenever its residents develop inconvenient opinions. Democracy therefore remains securely protected from voters.

* None of the quotes in this article were spoken by an actual person. More info.