Uncivil Disobedience

by digby

Just a little observation about the right: I read this on Calitics this morning:

We just got a report in from a polling location in Contra Costa that a poll worker just came out and berated our volunteers, stating that she was morally opposed to what they were doing. Not exactly within the job description for a poll worker.

I realized reading that the right has created this myth that if you are morally opposed to doing something you have a right to break the law and suffer no consequences. They created this theme around the abortion debate going all the way back to the Hyde Amendment and more recently with groups like Pharmacists For Life and the gay marriage issue and faith based initiatives. It’s inevitable that some poll workers and federal employees would get confused and think they have the right to break federal and state laws generally if they find them morally objectionable.

If these were undertaken as acts of civil disobedience, with the full knowledge that they would be prosecuted, then that would be one thing. We have a long and honorable tradition of such things. But they want to be exempted from the consequences. That’s not the way we do it.

And while we have always had corruption of the electoral system, like every democracy, at least on some minor levels we have never allowed the ballot to be compromised because of someone’s “moral objections” to something on it. Again, it’s just not the way we do it.

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