Parsons’ experience
will benefit Morgantown
After having attended a number of City Council meetings, I believe the city will benefit immensely if long-time resident Barbara Parsons is elected to the Second Ward council seat.
Her experiences as president of the Monongalia County school board, and a member of the MUB board, among others, have shown her how to govern effectively.
While she was president of the Monongalia County Board of Education, with its much larger budget, it lowered the local tax rate citizens pay for school support as well as built new buildings.
She was recently appointed to the MUB board, the city’s water and sewer utility, a post she held a number of years earlier.
She’s helped develop vision statements, and then set goals and programs to carry them out.
Skills she has developed in a career too lengthy to list in this letter will allow Morgantown council to operate as a true governing board, developing an achievable plan to restore the city’s title as Morgantown, one of the nation’s most livable cities.
Evelyn Ryan
Morgantown
Poll workers should
believe in democracy
I was discriminated against at the voting booth. Before I could cast my humble vote for (Morgantown) City Council, I was senselessly questioned for 45 minutes. Luckily, I graduated from WVU’s College of Law and could insist on my legal rights. But many voters may not be so lucky.
I am transmasculine. I was declared female at birth but am masculine. The poll workers were clearly uncomfortable with my gender expression and, despite the gender marker on my license, called me every pronoun under the sun and subjected me to abnormal scrutiny.
First, they questioned the resemblance on my state-issued ID (a photo just a year old). When that didn’t work, they decided my signature was suspect. Next, they decided to question my address of residence. Finally, after acknowledging that they’d asked me a host of legally irrelevant questions, they simply encouraged me to “vote later” when their system was back running. No other voter was so encouraged.
I want to believe people work the polls because they believe in democracy. Democracy means that everyone gets a vote, even if they don’t look the way you want them to. Please consider that you might be discriminating against someone without knowing it.
Robb Livingood
Morgantown
Why not allow felons all
their constitutional rights
The right to vote is the most basic right of any democracy. In fact, without this right a democracy ceases to be one. This is why I support Sen. Bernie Sanders’ stance on granting inmates and felons the right to vote.
Just because a person is incarcerated, does not mean that they have given up all their constitutional rights. For instance, we permit Christian inmates to attend church service and read the Bible and we provide special diets for Jewish and Muslim inmates. Additionally, many inmates have published books from prison exercising their First Amendment right of freedom of speech and the press.
Denying them the basic right to vote would appear to be unconstitutional.
Many countries grant inmates and felons the right to vote. Canada, Ireland and Israel are a few that permit inmates the right to vote. Many opponents state that it would be unjust to allow someone like the Unabomber or the Boston Marathon bomber the right to vote.
However, in Israel, the person who assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin still retains his right to vote. The United States should not deny a group the right to vote solely because we do not like the members of that group. Furthermore, most inmates are not the Unabomber.
Other opponents claim that inmates will band together to change the law and free themselves. This is unlikely. In fact, if someone believes this could happen, it only goes to demonstrate that the United States has far too many people incarcerated.
Inmates and felons should retain their constitutional right to vote. By denying any segment of the population the right to vote, even a segment we entirely disagree with, a democracy cannot be considered a true democracy where every voice is counted.
Michael J. Sharley
Westover
