That due process be honored in my right to vote no more, and no less, than anyone else’s vote.
That as an American citizen, meeting all the qualifications to vote, age, residency, etc., I be able to register to vote as long as I follow the proper procedures of time, place, and proof that I am qualified.
When my vote is cast, whether in person, or by mail-in ballot, that my vote can clearly be known to be my vote, not cast on my behalf by someone else, without my knowledge, or even against my own intentions.
That when I go to my polling place, and am found on the voter rolls, and am confirmed as that person on the voter rolls, I am given my ballot and allowed to vote. That no one else can step up and claim to be me and cast my vote, so that when i show up, I am not able to cast my ballot.
That if I request an absentee ballot, a mail-in ballot, that my ballot arrives and is delivered to me, and I am the one who gets to cast it and return it, not someone else on my behalf, without my knowledge, or even against my own intentions.
That if I choose NOT to vote in a particular election, someone else doesn’t vote for me in person, or casts a mail-in ballot on my behalf anyway.
There was a march in Washington DC, a March on Washington to Defend the Vote. Its alleged purpose was to protest a roll-back on people’s rights to vote. But its organizers, to what I could hear from them, did not defend even ONE of the items I listed above. None of the measures they are protesting would ensure the sanctity and validity of my vote, of your vote, if you are a properly registered American Citizen. None of those provisions they are protesting would remove one qualified citizen from the voter rollls.
In fact, their, their drawing attention to the wrong issues, in past years, I deem to be part of what allowed me to be disenfranchised and prevented from voting in 2023 and 2024.
Ever since I moved to my current home in 2003, I have voted at the Avondale United Methodist Church. I can walk to the polling place, the Avondale United Methodist Church, KCMO. But in 2023, during a time when my health and transportation availability prevented me from getting around, someone at the church called the Clay County Election Board and told them they did not want me at their building, so without my permission, the election board changed my polling place to somewhere I could not get to, despite my protest, and so I didn’t try to vote until Aug. 6, 2024, when the board unexpectedly changed my polling place back to Avondale United Methodist Church, KCMO.
When I went into that polling place that morning, I went up to one of the four polling officials to get my ballot, and was told by him that I was not wanted in that building, that THE CHURCH did not want me there. And he looked down and intimidated the other three officials, when he denied me my ballot, at my polling place. HE confirmed it was my polling place, and DENIED me my ballot, because someone at the CHURCH talked to him, and convinced him his duty to please someone or someones at the church was more important than the duty of his job as an election official.
So I left, without voting, because the threat of police and an arrest for disturbing the peace at my polling place would not have allowed me to vote.
But I did call the Clay County Board of Elections. The person I spoke to verified that it was my polling place, and I should have been allowed to vote. Later that day I was called back by the person at the board. She had come down from the county seat, sat all four poll workers down, and explained to them that anything between me and the church was between me and the church, but that they had to allow me to vote if I showed up at the poll. I thanked her and asked her what was going to be done to the church for interfering with an election official, an obvious crime. I couldn’t get any interest in the actual crime committed, but I was able to go back to the polling place and vote, while being heckled by people from the church trying to prevent me from voting.
I tried to follow up with the Methodist Church hierarchy about the issue, but couldn’t seem to find any contact information for their offices online, and that same evening someone set fire to our house, which prevented me from immediately trying to follow up on the issue.
We are still dealing with the aftermath of that fire, but recently I was able to locate contact information for the church hierarchy. I have made four calls in the past few weeks, left messages, and have not been able yet to speak to a church official. They seem to be putting me off, they haven’t talked to me yet, to get my story, but they seem to need to hear the local church’s side first, and I wonder if they will ever bother trying to actually get my story at all. I feel put off and discriminated against by the United Methodist Church.
In fact, I know I have been put off by them, and discriminated against by the United Methodist Church of America, an organization whose Theological positions have strong language about the rights of people to vote.
No matter what issue anyone at the church, or the Avondale United Methodist Church itself, had or has with me, it is improper and illegal for them to handle that by talking to an election official, an official of the government, and getting that official to deny me the right to vote. And I challenge the church itself, the United Methodist Church in America, here and now, to prove to me that it stands by its moral high ground, and takes disciplinary action against someone or someones, publicly, including turning them in for the commissions of their crimes (instead of protecting the guilty) or forever abrogate any claims to represent the High and Holy, in this or any other moral issue.
It is this type of intimidation that the laws are meant to protect people from. And because it is me, and I am not of a discrimated class (though I am definitely being discriminated against) that no one will pay attention to me or seems to care. This ONGOING intimitation I feel every time I go to vote. When a church opens its building to the public to be a polling place, it loses the right to choose who can come into its building to vote, if the person is legally registered to vote there.
And so I call out all the hypocrites, Democrat and church official alike, who lets this continue to happen to me and doesn’t do something about it when it stares them in the face (Suzy Conaway, I am speaking to you too.)
At The Rainbow 