This kind of dumbness just re-affirms the Tea Party’s paranoia:

A Dallas County tea party member got to vote Friday after being turned away last week because she refused to remove a pin with a symbol of the tea party movement on it.

The first time Jackie Moomaw tried to vote, an election judge considered her wearing the pin at the poll electioneering against state law and asked her to remove it. The Dallas County Elections Department backed the judge.

Moomaw’s pin reads “Don’t Tread on Me” and has a symbol of the coiled rattlesnake, which the tea party has recently adopted as symbol for their group.

First, it’s true that if you go into a polling place with a campaign button or political party button, they will ask you to remove it. Polling places are supposed to be neutral sites. No electioneering means no electioneering.

Second, it’s true that the Tea Party has adopted this symbol, called the Gadsden flag. But it existed looooong before the Tea Party. It’s been a beloved symbol of libertarians since … forever. It’s not an official flag of the United States anymore than the Confederate Stars and Bars (which is another symbol you will see at Tea Party events).

Election officials here were within their rights to ask this proto-fascist (she is one whether she knows it or not) to remove the pin.

But it just gives these assholes another peg to hang their racist, anti-civil liberties hat on. ‘Oh, look. The evil government is trying to suppress us.’ No, dumbass. You are being treated just like everyone else.

Frankly, there’s electioneering and wearing a damn button. If I’m handing out literature and asking people to vote a certain way, I’m electioneering. If I’m just wearing a damn button, I’m just wearing a damn button. But all it takes it one asshole to complain about someone with a button, and then there’s a different group claiming to be oppressed.

It has a lot to do with the belief shared by many that you have the right to go through life unexposed to beliefs with which you personally disagree, to to facts that have a tendency to disprove your opinion of the way things ought to be.

I sympathize with election officials who have to endure all this bullshit.