A Vote To Amend Our Ways

On November 6, 2007, New Jersey voters will decide on whether to amend Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 6 of the New Jersey Constitution with ballot question #4.

To describe people with disabilities, the archaic demeaning language of “idiot” and “insane” has remained embedded in our State’s constitution dating back to the first sent telegram in 1844. Sixty-three years later, political correctness will rear its ugly head to recapitulate the denial of the right to vote with a progressive lightning rod.

New Jersey voters now have a chance to replace these two offensive outdated phrases with the wording “a person who has been adjudicated by a court of competent jurisdiction to lack the capacity to understand the act of voting.”

While contemplating the blessed need for legislative wordiness as a substitution for what sounds like name-calling, a competent enough fellow accidentally spilled his ordinary looking friend’s coffee in front of me at a convenience store.

The man minus a beverage scolded, “You fu@k-in idiot!”

“You crazy, dawg.” scoffed the scalded man, he of no thumbs. “You ain’t right neither.”

What was a hanging chad in me now tore at the suffrage. My vote is that we may have evolved little since 1844. It is still within my constitutional right to say so.