NW Indiana Times: Hillary-Supporting Mayor Decries Students Bussed to Polling Locations
Thu Apr 24, 2008 at 06:02:09 PM PDT
The mayor of Hammond, Indiana, has complained to the Northwest Indiana Times about the local practice of bussing students to polling places. Field trips have been organized to encourage civic participation, but the Mayor believes the practice benefits Obama.
Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr., a supporter of Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton denounced it Wednesday as a shameless political power play.
"To me it seems like an orchestrated effort on behalf of the Obama campaign to take kids who should be in school learning to read and write, instead giving them a day off and telling them to vote for Obama.
"When you corral kids together and ship them to polling places, it's completely unethical." McDermott said.
The mayor does not appear to have been bothered by this practice in the past.
Washington said Lew Wallace students have been bused to Crown Point to vote for three years now.
Of course the students aren't being told who to vote for and teachers are not escorting them into the voting booth, but the students are primarily African-American and one can assume that most of them are voting for Senator Obama. Furthermore, these students are the ones most likely to be disenfranchised from voting either because they lack transportation to polling locations or because they come from a community that is historically underrepresented in the electorate. A schoolboard Trustee says it best:
"This is a very adequate and educational field trip to go see the voting process and have time to actually vote. It is a learning process for government economics, which is a mandatory requirement to graduate. . . . Whatever the cost of gas, for helping a young person exercising their right to vote, that is a cost I don't think anybody on this board or the state would have a problem with."
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this publicity is most likely only meant to stir up pre-existing prejudice for political gain. (This, btw, is not the same thing as 'racism'. It's called political expediency.) It's worth noting that this practice is taking place in Gary, Indiana, a primarily African-American town and being decried by the mayor of Hammond, a mostly white neighboring town. Of course, as Democrats we should be tearing down whatever obstacles to voting exist for historically disenfranchised groups!
If he were truly concerned about unfair election practices, or city funds being used to promote a candidate, he might take down the front-page promotion the city of Hammond gives to his candidate, Hillary Clinton, on their very own website:
Please give the mayor's office a call or write an email:
Email: tom@mcdermottformayor.com and contact form here: http://www.gohammond.com/...
Phone: 219-853-6301 (Mayor's Office)
or
Write a Letter to the Editor to the Northwest Indiana Times:
http://nwi.com/...
UPDATE: I should clarify some presumptions made in the comment sections. These are not college-age students; they are high school students. Gary, Indiana is a neighbor of Hammond, Indiana and is one of the most heavily African-American and severely economically depressed cities in the entire nation. For the neighboring mayor to butt his nose into their business is quite a bold move, especially when the schoolboard is merely facilitating voting in much the same way that senior centers do. Again, a white township's mayor is decrying the schoolboard of a neighboring African-American community because it's given transportation to some desperately poor high school students so they can vote. This is not right.
Permalink | 92 comments