Jon Huntsman

I notice a lot of publicity about Jon Huntsman recently. It's not surprising to find two posts in a row over at Dennis Sanders' "Big Tent Revue" blog — he's shown a great liking for Huntsman for some time. But his name is appearing in a lot of places, treated as a serious rival to Mitt Romney, unlike such as Herman Cain (who has about as much chance of nomination as I do) or Fred Karger (who might as well have never declared his candidacy, for all the attention he's getting). So I should weigh in on him. I don't know very much about him, of course. But one newspaper described him as "the only moderate" in the race; that alone tends to incline me favorably toward him, though the comment comes from a paper tht is hardly itself describable as moderate. And the simple fact that Dennis Sanders likes him has to count in his favor, as Sanders' positions and mine tend to be pretty close on a lot of issues.

That's probably enough to say that Huntsman gets a positive rating — if he becomes well-enough known that it looks like he can beat Obama in November of next year, I could easily support him.

Who should be allowed to vote?

Shortly after I posted my piece on Fred Karger, I looked him up on Wikipedia. Not surprisingly, the biggest piece on his opinions given in the article referred to his positions on gay rights, but there were two other things given: his stance on Israel, which seems not too far from my own, and his advocacy of an amendment to grant the vote to sixteen-year-olds, the most radical of his positions I've seen so far. My own position on that point is ambivalent. When I grew up, you had to be twenty-one to vote, and I was a big advocate of lowering it to eighteen. By the time that it happened, I was too old to benefit; I was already older than 21. But is 16 too young? I'm not sure. I am aware that I had mostly formed my political opinions by the age of fourteen, so I could have voted intelligently at 16. But I'm not typical. I really don't know. The few places that I've seen that give the vote to under-18s are not very likely to inspire confidence. Two if them are Iran (with a fifteen-year-old voting age) and the former Italian neo-Fascist party which allowed twelve-year-olds to vote in party questions! (On the other hand, the only other party I know of to have such a rule was the Canadian Liberals, certainly a democratic enough organization. I don't know if this is still the rule, but at one time their rules allowed fourteen-year-olds to vote. At least some of their local organizations still do.) For me, the jury is still out.

It is interesting that States are no longer permitted to require literacy tests; when I was growing up, my then-home-state of New York did, but because some Southern states used literacy tests unfairly administered to disenfranchise nonwhites, the Voting Rights Act prevented all states from using literacy tests. I cannot see a justification for allowing illiterates to vote. If they cannot read the campaign materials, and they cannot read the ballots, they have no right to be allowed to vote, in my opinion. But because some Southern states used the tests in a way that deprived college professors of their votes, the Feds made it impossible to use literacy tests. That, I think, is a shame.

The biggest variation in the voting rules of different States is how criminal backgrounds are handled. In the State where I now live, Maryland, because two different laws which were passed at different times are involved, criminals with only one serious conviction can vote as soon as they are released from any parole/probation obligations, but criminals with more than one serious conviction can only vote after a three-year waiting period. This is a middle-of-the-road rule; on the one hand, in Maine, criminals can still vote while serving time; on the other hand, in Virginia and Florida, one conviction on a felony charge means no vote ever, unless you get the governor to restore your rights. Both of these seem pretty extreme, though I'm not sure whether Maryland's is the best compromise.

There are even some places (the city of Takoma Park, not far from where I live in Maryland, for example) that don't even require you to be a citizen to vote in local elections. Now that is going too far, though.

Fred Who???

On another blog, "Race 4 2012," I see that yet another person has introduced himself into the 2012 race: Fred Karger.

You will undoubtedly ask: "Fred Who????" I certainly never heard of him. But the post says:

Openly gay, Republican Presidential candidate Fred Karger to formally file the documentation necessary to be a Presidential candidate. Here’s an excerpt from his press release:

Today is a very significant day for my community and me. I have just submitted my papers to the Federal Election Commission, making me the first candidate to file for the 2012 Republican nomination for President.

I am also the first openly gay person, in a major political party, to ever run for President of the United States...

Well, you've got to give him credit for courage. I would be surprised for an openly gay candidate to have much of a chance in the Democratic Party for the Presidency. In the Republican Party, the religious Right has so much influence that it's unbelievable that anyone would try.

But the big question is: who is he, other than being gay? What does he stand for? What are his qualifications? Until I hear more about him, I will not say that I can support him, or that I can't. I would not let sexual orientation dictate my position on a candidate; all I can say is, it's an interesting development.