When it comes to the vote, we're fighting a second Civil War
The talk shows are filled with the latest rumor about WikiLeaks and Russian interference in our elections. What was done still remains a mystery. But Republican tricky leaks — the systematic efforts to suppress the vote — are an established fact, and a far greater threat to free elections.
The facts are not in dispute. A recent report by the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty notes that in addition to suffering the most extreme inequality in the industrial world, the U.S. ranks among the lowest for voter participation. Voter registration levels, for example, are 64 percent in the U.S., compared with 91 percent in Canada and the United Kingdom and 99 percent in Japan.
This isn’t an accident. As The New York Times reports, conservatives have openly stated for years that they do better when fewer people vote. In the South under segregation, the power structure used any number of tricks — poll taxes, and special quizzes, intimidation and just plain murder — to keep blacks from voting. Now, Republicans are clear that they must suppress the vote if they are to keep power. As professor Donald Jones stated at a Florida hearing of the National Commission for Voter Justice, “When it comes to the vote, we are in the Second Civil War.”
Full Article: https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/voter-suppression-law-worse-than-russian-interference-in-our-elections/
We need to stop ignoring this issue. It is hard to focus on it with the sensational headlines and tweets coming in fast and furious, but we need to focus. If anything, let's wake up the national Dems so they can organize teams, state by state, to fight this anti-American, illegal usurping of citizens rights.
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