Trying Hard To Vote In Kansas

ALL ACROSS THE FRUITED PLAIN, states with a preponderance of conservative lawmakers are imposing strict requirements on voters to prove who they are, and those laws are beginning to meet with disapproval in the federal court system. In Kansas, it is necessary to prove U.S. citizenship before voting. Just whip out a copy of your birth certificate or passport, and you're good to go. The courts are considering the possibility that such requirements make it too difficult for some groups of people to vote, groups such as college students, minorities, folks who don't carry their safety deposit boxes in their pants pockets, and the rural elderly. The right wing concern for integrity even extends to President Obama. Donald Trump wanted to see the president's birth certificate, to prove not only that he exists, but that he was born in a United State. He was, but barely. Hawaii became a state in 1959, a mere two years before Barack Hussein Obama came on the scene. When he leaves office, the former president had better pack documents before hitting the ballot box, like everybody else. Presumably, all this was taken care of when voters registered in the first place, but one can never be too careful. Suggestions that our conservative defenders of integrity are hoping to reduce the voting population by weeding out those less likely to vote for republicans are scoffed at by the defenders of proper protocol, who say they are merely trying to prevent the two or unregistered people who fall through the cracks each election from disrupting democracy and jeopardizing the republic. In the recent gubernatorial primary in Kansas, it is estimated that about twenty thousand flesh and blood citizens of the United States, though properly registered, were prevented by voting due to their inability to produce a passport, birth certificate or local magistrate as witness to authenticity. But all is not lost. At least one good righteous American got through the barriers and performed the civic responsibility by producing a family Bible, with all the ancestor's signatures, neatly arranged in the margins, just to the left of the verse wherein homo sapiens is kicked out of a perfectly lovely garden for being hungry, and selecting a nice ripe piece of fruit, from the wrong tree.