Thurston Brags About Using State Resources to Register Republican-Leaning Demographic

 Arkansas Secretary of State John Thurston is sending his employees around the state with "mobile offices" in conjunction with a veteran's group in order to register more veterans to vote. They will also be encouraging all veteran-adjacent voters to "dedicate their vote to a veteran". I know this because he is public about it. He is proud of the effort. 

I'm a veteran. I am all for veteran's voting. And if people want to "dedicate their vote to a veteran" that's good too. I think the effort is a worthy effort. But it isn't proper to do it with state resources. Paid state employees who work for a Republican SOS are out spending their workdays registering more voters in a demographic that has long swayed heavily Republican (and is 90% male for that matter). Some of you who are more partisan in your thinking, like the Secretary it would seem, may not see any problem with using state resources to bolster the position of your political party. But what if the shoe was on the other foot?

What if a Democrat Secretary of State sent half of his employees out to register black voters? What if they asked voters to "dedicate their vote to a civil-rights leader."? Or even a campaign to register women voters while urging people to dedicate their vote to a great woman? My guess is that many would cry-foul and be indignant that their tax dollars were being used to selectively push to register voters in groups that tended to vote against their chosen political tribe.

The principled position is that if it is wrong to use state resources to favor one party then it is also wrong to do it for the other. 

Until voters consider the integrity of the process to be more important than winning the next election, we are going to be ruled by thugs, even if they have affable front-men to take the edge off that truth.