New Jersey Got It Right To Begin With

Now They're Going To Screw It All Up...


Being a good southern Redneck, I enjoy taking the opportunity to occasionally poke fun at our friends that live north of the Mason Dixon line.

Things like cooking and eating Grits, speach patterns, life attitudes in general--nothing is sacred when I turn my sights on your lifestyle regardless of where you live.

Now it has come to my attention that New Jersey has an interesting constitutional limitation addressing who or whom can vote in local and national elections.

It seems that New Jersey can currently legally keep you from voting if you're an IDIOT:

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (Reuters) -- New Jersey is to consider cutting the word 'idiot' from its constitution so that people with some mental disabilities won't be barred from voting.

State Senate President Richard Codey introduced a bill Monday that would remove language from the New Jersey constitution that was designed more than 150 years ago to prevent people suffering from mental illness or handicap from casting their vote in national, state or local elections.

Codey wants to eliminate a section that says "no idiot or insane person should enjoy the right of suffrage" and substitute with a reference to "a person who has been adjudicated by a court of competent jurisdiction to lack the capacity to understand the act of voting."

I say that instead of changing the New Jersey law, that we aught to vote the same language into the constitution of the other 49 states and the District of Columbia, then sit back and enjoy the results of our efforts.

In lieu of the "idiot" language, I think that everyone should at least be able to identify a picture of their state and national representatives/senators before they are allowed into the voting booth.

Wouldn't it be fun to eliminate the party affiliation designation from the ballot and see the outcome of an election where the voters had to actually know who and what they were voting for rather than just punching the button beside the big "D" or "R"?

Then again, maybe it's just me...