Freedom Folks

Sunday, November 26, 2006

To Conflate?

Source: normantranscript

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Oklahoma lawmakers should take a page from history and change the state's voting laws to allow all of-age state residents -- no matter what their citizenship status -- the right to vote, an OSU professor said last week.



Dr. Bob Darcy, a political science professor at Oklahoma State University, said Oklahoma should revert back to its territorial-style voting laws. Under those laws, he said, all residents, regardless of their citizenship status, had the right to vote in state and local elections.



"When Oklahoma was a territory, its election laws gave residents -- no matter what their residency status was -- the right to vote," Darcy said. "That's the way it should be now."



Darcy, in Oklahoma City to participate in the state Political Science Association's annual convention, said Oklahoma's current voting laws disenfranchise a large number of the state's population.



"Across Oklahoma there are large pockets of people who cannot vote because their paperwork isn't in order. Yet, these same people have jobs, families, homes and are paying taxes here. That's wrong."



While Darcy acknowledged that many resident aliens living here are undocumented -- or illegal -- Oklahoma, he said, was a state developed by an "immigrant society."



"Our state was founded by immigrants," he said. "So, I find the current political rhetoric flying around right now a bit ironic. This state was settled by non-citizens from other places."

Does higher education release a "stupid" chemical into the brain? Take note, whenever a purveyor of "news" conflates legal and illegal immigration? They've chosen sides and ceased to do the very job for which they receive compensation.



H/T LoneWacko



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