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Please Disenfranchise My Daughter

A North Carolina man is going to great lengths to make sure his “illiterate, developmentally disabled” daughter doesn’t vote: [Cecil] Pearson told The Daily Caller his daughter, Darlene Pearson, “should have been purged from the voting rolls along time ago,” noting that he has contacted several elected officials about the issue, including North Carolina Democratic […]

A North Carolina man is going to great lengths to make sure his “illiterate, developmentally disabled” daughter doesn’t vote:

[Cecil] Pearson told The Daily Caller his daughter, Darlene Pearson, “should have been purged from the voting rolls along time ago,” noting that he has contacted several elected officials about the issue, including North Carolina Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan.

“Kay Hagan said she couldn’t help me. … She couldn’t do anything about it,” Pearson said in a phone interview with TheDC on Thursday. “It was a nice way of telling me she didn’t want to get involved.

She’s entitled to, according to NC law. But the story suggests it’s not exactly the voting itself that’s gotten his dander up, but who his disabled daughter probably voted for:

“The child has been a group home for 20 years and has never mentioned voting, and then the night before the election, the administrator of the group home holds a round table with my daughter to see who’s registered to vote,” he said.

Pearson called the round table “a crash course” and said the administrator told his daughter “who Obama was and what he stood for, and it was driven in their heads.”

The implication, of course, is that a roomful of people just got community organized. Only the marks suffer from mental retardation and supposedly don’t know any better. If that’s actually what happened then shame on the group home’s administration for grossly overstepping its role.

But what’s astonishing to me is that the man must know his state’s voting law, if he’s taking the trouble to write to his Senator. It’s not a clerical oversight he’s taking issue with, Pearson thinks the law should be changed. Changed so his daughter and people like her can’t vote. And he’s advocating for that, rather than just helping her make as informed of a decision as possible, or leaving the stupid issue alone because it’s not worth bringing the attention down on his daughter who already faces enough challenges.

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