Thomas Payne on Voting Rights

Are our voting rights under attack? Yes. Voter rights must be protected and not neglected. Enough voter suppression, gerrymandering and scheming to deny people their right to vote.

One St. Augustine City Commissioner wanted to erase your rights to vote for Mayor. It almost went on the ballot for a Primary Election next year. I exposed it in a Folio Weekly guest editorial. Commission voted unanimously to drop it, or table it, "sending it into outer space forever," as Mayor Tracy Upchurch said.

Our November 12, 2019 victory preserving St. Augustine residents' right to vote for St. Augustine Mayor empowered me to run for Supervisor of Elections.

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations.  1989.

NUMBER:	1906
AUTHOR:	Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
QUOTATION:	The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case.
ATTRIBUTION:	THOMAS PAINE, “Dissertation on First Principles of Government,” The Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. Moncure D. Conway, vol. 3, p. 267 (1895). Originally published in 1795.
SUBJECTS:	Voters and voting
WORKS:	Thomas Paine Collection