Page 5 - Florida Sentinel 11-6-20

Editorial/Columns
FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN
(USPS 202-140)
2207 21st Avenue, Tampa Florida 33605 • (813) 248-1921 Published Every Tuesday and Friday By
FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHING Co., Member of National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA)
S. KAY ANDREWS, PUBLISHER
C. BLYTHE ANDREWS III, PRESIDENT/CONTROLLER ALLISON WELLS-CLEBERT, CFO
GWEN HAYES, EDITOR
IRIS HOLTON, CITY EDITOR
BETTY DAWKINS, ADVERTISING DIRECTOR HAROLD ADAMS, CIRCULATION MANAGER TOYNETTA COBB, PRODUCTION MANAGER LAVORA EDWARDS, CLASSIFIED MANAGER
Subscriptions-$44.00-6 Months Both Editions: $87.00-Per Year Both Editions.
Opinions expressed on editorial pages of this newspaper by Columnists or Guest Writers, do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of The Florida Sentinel Bulletin or the Publisher.
We Gonna Be Alright
am writing this column on Nov 1st, two days be- fore the presidential election. Of course, this means that I don't have a clue what the re- sults would be Tuesday
night.
With this being the case,
there are still two things that I'm certain will have hap- pened by the time this paper hits newsstands on Friday. One is that an old white guy will have, once again, taken control of the Oval Office and the other is that millions of people will be pissed off by that outcome. In mathemat- ics, these would be referred to as givens, known variables within an otherwise unsolved equation.
If I had the opportunity to
wager on who would come out on top, Donald Trump or Joe Biden, my money would definitely be on the latter. This is mainly due to the fact that I don't believe a majority of Americans are willing to go through four more years of the dumpster fire that it has been with the Trump presidency.
Even though there are a lot of Trump die-hards out there who have gotten drunk off of his snake oil, and who can't seem to see past the visor of their red M.A.G.A. hats, it's hard to imagine there being enough of them around to keep this orange- haired madman in office.
If I'm wrong not only will it be a clear indicator of the
level of moral dysfunction that exists beneath the facade of high civilization America has presented to the world, but it would also be an indict- ment of the United States' educational system that it could produce such a gullible and simple-minded popula- tion.
Hopefully this won't be the case and the rest of this year will simply be a count- down until Trump is offi- cially kicked to the curb. While it's true that a Biden victory would mark the re- turn to the lazy, half-hearted, semi-truthful politics that paved the way for Trump to claim the seat of power in the first place. As sad as it is to say, compared to the only al- ternative, that kind, sweet smelling, normal, bull---- will be more than welcomed.
Reality On Ice is © by the Florida Sentinel Bul- letin Publishing Com- pany. You can contact Mr. Barr at: cbar- ronice@gmail.com.
POSTMASTER: Send Address Change To: Florida Sentinel Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3363 Tampa, FL 33601 Periodical Postage Paid At Tampa, FL
C. Blythe Andrews 1901-1977 (1945)
C. Blythe Andrews, Jr. 1930-2010 (1977)
Popular Vote Vs. Electoral College
Only in America can you lose and still win. “They say that the founders of the American democracy set up the Electoral College (Article 2: Section 1) to pre- vent a president like President Donald Trump from being elected. Well, for the first time, we have elected a despot for president, thus there is no longer a need for an Electoral College.
We propose that every person who also feels this way should call their Congressional Senator and Rep- resentative and express your opinion and ask them to amend the Constitution by striking down the Electoral College and changing it to popular vote. Indeed, had the Electoral College been obsolete in 2016, wherein Hilary Clinton received 3 million more votes than Don- ald Trump, the courses of history would have been changed.
“Created by the framers of the Constitution at the Philadelphia Convention in 1787,” the Electoral Col- lege was seen as a compromise between allowing highly populated areas to have excessive voting powers and letting Congress elect the president.” Why the ra- tionale for how many and where a voter lives makes a difference has never been fully explained to our satis- faction.
For instance, people who live in Miami, Tampa, Or- lando, Tallahassee, Gainesville and Jacksonville could very well be said to have too much voting power for the election of our governor. Moreover, the largest popu- lated sections of a city could very well have too much voting power for election of the mayor of a city; and so
on.Both George Bush and Donald Trump became pres- idents through the Electoral College system, yet lost the popular vote. Thus, in reality, they were elected president by a minority vote. More recently, the use of the Electoral College has nearly destroyed our democracy. We say it is time for a change to popular vote.
What about you?
Blacks, Republicans And Voting Rights
ou would be interested to know that my sister and I are the only two
Democrats in our family. I found this out when I regis- tered to vote. Because our elders always voted for De- mocrats, we had no idea they were Republicans. My mother told me that “we vote for the man, not the party.” No doubt their party affilia- tion was based upon the his- torical tie to Abraham Lincoln.
Now the 2020 elections are over, lets reflect upon our voting rights and how they are still an issue in the 21st century. Today, we often wonder why and how any Black and other minorities could vote for a Republican since the Republican Party has attempted to obstruct voting all over America.
Since 2010, these efforts have escalated in Georgia, Florida, Kansas, Texas and North Dakota.
I’ve often wondered why the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has to be reauthorized periodically since its passage. As far as I’ve found out, the Voting Rights Act has had five major amendments 1970, 1975, 1982, 1992, and 2006.
Congress enacted the law as a means of prohibiting racial discrimination against racial minorities throughout the United States, especially in the South, and guarantee- ing them the rights in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.
Here we are 55 years later still fighting attempts to sup- press the racial minorities and student opportunities to vote.
Since 2010, one expert says that many of the restric- tions are part of a broader strategy to tighten access to the ballot. Voter suppression efforts by the Republican
Party include attempts to re- strict voting rights using tac- tics such as photo identification, exact matches (name and signature), re- moving voters’ names from registration rolls if they have not participated in an elec- tion within a prescribed pe- riod of time, closing polling places, cutting back on early voting time, and to prevent former felons from having their rights restored.
Many of the new voting restrictions have been tied to the 2020 election, such as in- creasing the distance voters have to travel to the polls (Georgia), reducing the num- ber of polling places (Texas), use of unofficial ballot collec- tion boxes (California), and attempts to prevent “vote by mail access.”
Our history dictates that Blacks use their right to vote. The ballot in America is steeped in the blood of our ancestors who were killed, injured and threatened if they tried to exercise their right to vote. Because of the Blacks who fought and died for the right to vote, we are obligated to seize and use that right.
Your political party is your choice, but understand that we need to know if peo- ple we vote for even care whether you vote or not.
Think about it.
I
Y
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2020 FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY PAGE 5-A