June 8th, 2008

Good evening!

And if this isn’t the coolest and wettest spring in a long, long time, please set me straight!

Given that politics is a multi-faceted conglomeration of issues, policies and personalities, it is tough to find common ground as we try to discuss it with one another. So I spend a fair amount of time thinking of ways to accurately convey to citizens like you my opinions on where we all are in the political realm.

So today, while coming back from an outing on Casper Mountain, I had a thought. It is a political analogy to the phrase “web of life”, that is frequently used when discussing environmental issues.

Of course that phrase refers to the fact that all aspects of our environment, from the smallest to the largest, are linked together and that we should all be concerned when any aspect of life on Planet Earth is threatened or eliminated. I agree with that.

The politically analogous phrase I have decided to include in my campaign message is “web of rights”. Because it occurred to me that ALL of the rights theorized under our system of government are linked together, either directly or indirectly.

Many of the rights that we have, and that immediately spring to mind, are the big ones. Rights such as: freedom of speech, the freedom to assemble, the right to arm bears, and the right to run for public office are well known and commonly thought of.

The problem I see is that there is an entire subset of lesser known rights that are being undermined by numerous elected officials who have no respect for the individual rights that are the foundation of our system. When those lesser rights are damaged, the web of rights becomes weaker.

One quick example for you. When I started in the Legislature in 1989, it only took one valid write-in vote at the Primary Election to qualify a person to fill an empty ballot slot for a partisan office. The right of the individual was respected.

After I had been in the Legislature a few years, some legislators advanced the idea that only having to have one valid signature made it too easy to get on the ballot. So then the threshold was raised to 5 valid write-in signatures. And not too long after that, the threshold was raised to 25 valid write-in signatures, and that is where it stands today.

Consequently it is much more difficult to gain access to the ballot by write-in vote today than it was in the past.

Our web of rights has been significantly weakened by those actions of the Legislature. There are many more examples that I will post on my website in the near future, but the issue is clear to me. Our individual rights are in trouble.

Thank you for your time, and I will chat with you next week.

Candidate Keith “leave my rights alone” Goodenough