Dear editor:
Thomas Paine was an American patriot in our Revolutionary War and his writings were/are so powerful that both the English and French wanted to jail him; both banned his writings.
Some of his writings, in 1795, about voting rights include "the true and only true basis of representative government is equality of rights ... every man has a right to one vote ... the rich have no right to exclude the poor from the right of voting."
He also said, "inequality of rights is created by a combination in one part of the community to exclude another part from its rights ... but the offensive part of the case is that this exclusion from the right of voting implies a stigma on the moral character of the persons excluded." His most powerful statement about voting rights was: "The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected."
We have long seen a corrupt path by the national Republican Party, the champions of the rich, to actively engage in the practices Paine dreaded over 220 years ago!
Jim Pumphrey
Garland County
P.S. Don't destroy health care, work together to fix it!
Editorial on 07/23/2017