Dave Ross: Voters shouldn’t pay taxes if their vote is denied
Jul 20, 2017, 6:02 AM
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
President Donald Trump called the first meeting of his Election Integrity Committee yesterday, whose mission is to look for voter fraud.
The president seemed puzzled as to why so many states have refused to share their voter information with the White House. Blue states, of course, suspect he wants to suppress voting. But even Red states have refused.
Perhaps his little campaign joke about asking a foreign country to hack into private emails leaves them feeling a little clammy.
But I think I have a way of reassuring Red and Blue states alike.
We all agree that “no taxation without representation” is one of our founding principles. The actual slogan was “taxation without representation is tyranny.”
So I propose this: if the fear is that the president’s real agenda is to scare voters away, suppose Congress passed a law that any legally-registered voter who tries to cast their vote and is denied is exempt from paying all taxes from the time they are turned away until the next election.
A denied voter would be immediately exempt from sales tax, property tax, income tax, cellphone tax, gas tax, soda tax, liquor tax, license tab fees until the next election. No taxation without representation.
Once the president signed that law, it would show he has no intention of intimidating legal voters. Because it would encourage legal voters to show up even if they’re worried about being turned away. Heck, they might show up hoping to be turned away! It would also motivate the government to protect voting rights.
Nothing a government hates more than losing tax money.