Further proving you don’t have to be a politician to suppress the vote, the landlord of a Colorado trailer park threatened to increase rent for tenants should Joe Biden win the presidential election.
Multiple residents of a Fort Morgan trailer park sent emails to 9News reporting a letter their landlord had sent that they felt was a form of voter suppression. One of the residents filed a complaint to the office of Colorado’s Secretary of State, who forwarded the complaint to the state Attorney General.
The letter in full states:
“TO ALL TENANTS:
Please understand IF Joe Biden is elected as our next President, everything you do and have to pay for will change completely.
Everything will be increased. Like paying ALOT (sic) more in taxes, utilities, gasoline, groceries, new permits, fees and regulations…everything! This also means YOUR RENT will be increased to cover these expenses. Most likely, rent would DOUBLE in price!
IF the current President is re-elected, WE WILL NOT RAISE THE RENT FOR AT LEAST 2 YEARS!
Voting is your choice and we are not telling you how to vote. We are just informing our tenants what WE will do according to the election results.
If Trump wins, we all win. If Biden wins, we all lose.
VOTE on November 3, 2020.”
Wow, this dude really tried it.
First of all, if you want to be taken seriously, you need to lay off the caps. Also, it’s “a lot,” not “alot,” man. I’m just saying if you’re going to try to suppress the vote, maybe do a little more than printing out a glorified Facebook post.
Secondly, he does know this is a national election, right? You can’t hold your tenants responsible for what the nation at large decides to do. Cindy Marquez, a tenant at the trailer park, feels similarly.
“I mean, we can’t control how this whole election goes,” Cindy Marquez told 9NEWS. “We can’t control what everyone else does, you know? We can’t control the results.”
Marquez said that the letter “shocked” many other residents in the trailer park. “It was mainly hurtful, you know? How could someone say something like that or basically threaten us according to something that we can’t control?”
Lastly, I’m pretty sure the legality of this is sketchy, at best. I’m no legal scholar; most of my education on the judicial system comes from playing Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, but I feel like holding your tenants’ vote ransom definitely crosses some ethical lines, if not legal ones.
Marquez, who’s lived in the trailer park for 20 years, said that nothing like this has ever happened with prior landlords. She’s understandably concerned about the ability of her and her neighbors to stay in their homes should rent be increased.
“Our family lives paycheck to paycheck and right now we barely make things out with what we get,” she told 9News.
An investigation by the state Attorney General’s office is currently ongoing. Hopefully, it’ll be in favor of the tenants as, again, I’m no legal scholar, but if it looks like voter suppression, and sounds like voter suppression, it just might be voter suppression.
But what do I know, I’m just a nigga on a laptop.