Vote like your rights depend on it…

Longtime readers know that this bitch adores voting.  I unfortunately didn’t have time to teach Voter Education classes this cycle (sob), but I find comfort in knowing that there are tons of first time voters who will head to the polls for tomorrow’s Missouri primary.

Go forth and vote like your rights depend on it, y’all!

Cause they do…they really, really do.

Every year brings at least one example of why elections matter.

In Missouri we need only look at the 2010 State Senate race for District 24 when Barbara Fraser faced John Lamping.  The outgoing State Senator Joan Bray had been an outstanding champion for progressive causes including women’s reproductive health care.  A lot was at stake.

In 2010 the St. Louis Post-Dispatch painted Republican candidate Lamping as a moderate…even hinting that he would break with his party on key abortion votes.  Heck, even Missouri Right to Life opted not to endorse…that had to mean something, right.

Wrong.

Senator Lamping won that race in 2010.

In 2012 he wrote the highly controversial birth control refusal bill SB749…a bill that would allow any employer to refuse coverage of birth control in insurance plan simply because they profess that coverage violates the employers moral blah, blah, blah.

SB749 passed with ease.

Lamping emerged as the anti-choice darling…his picture adorning religious email blasts, his presence coveted at rallies in support of opposing birth control.

The same St. Louis Post-Dispatch that painted Lamping as something other than a typical lockstep Missouri Republican came out in opposition of his birth control refusal bill.

Governor Nixon vetoed the birth control refusal bill and the fate of that veto is now in the hands of the September veto session.

Elections matter.

The ballot is no place to roll the dice, close your eyes, and take a chance.

Vote like your rights depend on it.

They do.

I hope to see you at the polls tomorrow August 7!