Ensure right to vote: Letter in June 28 Kansas City Star

The Supreme Court says money is free speech. Surely our votes are free speech too.

There should be no prior restraint on our free speech right to vote. Republicans are erecting unnecessary barriers. For justification, they’ve fabricated the reason that sounds good: preventing voter fraud. The real reason: preventing voting while Democrat.

But it shouldn’t be easier to buy guns than to vote.

In McCutcheon vs. Federal Election Commission, Chief Justice John Roberts says limiting campaign money unduly burdens “an individual’s right to participate in the public debate through political expression and political association.”

What about the individual’s right to vote?

Roberts argues against restrictions on campaign money without proof of corruption. Potential voters should likewise be considered innocent until proven guilty.

Then there’s venture capitalist Tom Perkins, who proposes that he should have one vote for each dollar earned. (He has $8 billion.) “It should be like a corporation,” he said. “You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes.”

That would destroy the democratic principle of “one person, one vote.”

Don’t let the GOP and a few billionaires such as Perkins and the Koch brothers take away your free speech right to vote.

Susan Pepperdine

Fairway

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article637107.html#storylink=cpy