Simian Suffrage Suffers: Judge Refuses Right to Sue

These news items are funny, in a weird way. There's also something serious going on here.

"Texas appeals court: Monkeys, chimps can't sue" "The Dallas Morning News" (January 18, 2008)

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) say that nine chimpanzees and monkeys at Primarily Primates sanctuary in Texas didn't have good living conditions. Then the case gets interesting: PETA says that the primates should sue.

Not that someone should sue on their behalf: that the chimps and monkeys themselves should sue.

A Texas appeals wouldn't play along, so now PETA may appeal to a higher court.

It can get weirder. And I don't mean the possibility that the Supreme Court might open the door to lawsuits by chimps (which just happen to be handled by the wild side of animal rights groups).

I think it's only a matter of time before a charismatic chimp will be presented as a simian Frederick Douglass.

"Monkey see, monkeys sue to be called a 'person'" "Oakland Tribune" (May 5, 2007)

Austrian chimp Matthew Hiasl Pan's lawyer said that he's a person, legally. "Our main argument is that Hiasl is a person and has basic legal rights," is how Eberhart Theuer, lawyer for the Vienna "Association Against Animal Factories" said.

The case didn't go well. For the chimp's backers, anyway:

"Take a Closer Look. It's a Chimp, Dude" "KTAR.com The Valley's Home Page" (January 15, 2008)

"The Vienna-based Association Against Animal Factories sought to have him declared a person and petitioned to be appointed Matthew's trustee.

"But the high court upheld a September ruling by a judge in the town of Wiener Neustadt rejecting the petition, the group said Tuesday."

I've been hearing and reading serious proposals for extending suffrage to animals for over twenty years now. Given the capacity for people to make daft decisions, I think it's quite possible that we'll have to have chimp-friendly voting booths in the not-too-distant future.

Not that many changes need to be made. A minute-long video by Black Box Voting shows Baxter the chimp hacking a Diebold touch-screen voting machine system. Diebold says that the video was staged, and their machines are okay.

The point is, chimps should be able to handle the voting process: physically.