“Out of many, one.” Or so the phrase goes. You can find it on the Great Seal of the United States. It has been the unofficial motto of this country since the 1780s. Please note that the motto has thirteen letters, emblematic of the thirteen colonies that became one nation. It is symbolic of the many peoples who had come to those colonies from such places as England, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, France, Spain, and the Netherlands. Thirteen colonies united! Many peoples united! But were we ever one, one people, one country? From my reading of American history that mantra was and is fanciful thinking, a noble ideal we never seriously embraced, another facet of American myth-making. Take federal elections as an example. Despite the indisputable fact that federal elections are national events, we treat them as if the fifty states that comprise our confederation are independently entitled to determine how they will be conducted, and who, where, when, and how people will vote. Some states draw Congressional district maps in the most tortured ways to ensure that outcomes are tilted away from simple majority rule. Many states require forms of identification that, by design, are difficult for some citizens to obtain, thereby disenfranchising them. They purge voter rolls to disenfranchise others who may not have voted recently or who may have once been imprisoned. Or they may make it difficult for students living in the state to vote. They may make voting a hardship by reducing the number of polling stations and ballot drop-boxes in some districts, but not others. They even impose barriers to prevent certain classes of eligible new voters from registering. On the other hand, many other states do none of these things. Perhaps the national motto should be, “Do as you please!”