Members of Congress Call for End to Mass Voter Suppression and Insecure Elections
Members of Congress Call for End to Mass Voter Suppression and Insecure Elections
Friday, 29 April 2016 00:00 By Ben Ptashnik and Victoria Collier, Truthout | News Analysis
Congressional briefings are typically dull affairs, usually with only a few dozen participants, but it was standing room only in a House Judiciary Committee hearing room on April 21, when nine members of Congress, their staff and 200 activists gathered to address the present crisis in US democracy: voter suppression and the manipulation of US elections.
In 2016 - the first presidential election since the US Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act - a slew of new malicious laws and tactics are disenfranchising millions of Americans, even as the private control of US vote-counting technology has come under renewed scrutiny in a primary season marked by allegations of fraud and election rigging.
This high-stakes, emotionally charged election cycle has seen widespread closure of polling locations, unprecedented voter roll purges, voting machine failures and extreme waiting lines that cause countless voters to turn away without having cast a ballot. Many have been given "provisional" ballots that are simply not counted. Irregularities in Arizona, North Carolina, Wisconsin and New York have engendered intraparty accusations and lawsuits, exposing a dysfunctional and often undemocratic election process.
The nine members of Congress who spoke, all from predominantly minority districts, loudly condemned the "new Jim Crow" laws that have been forced on over half the states in the US, and which the lawmakers believe were designed to deliberately suppress voters in their districts, particularly people of color, the poor, the elderly and students.
Representatives included the dean of the House and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, John Conyers, and longtime civil rights champion Elijah Cummings. Others who made passionate and sometimes angry statements included Representatives G. K. Butterfield (co-chair of the Congressional Black Caucus), Sheila Jackson Lee, Terri Sewell, Maxine Waters, Marc Veasey, Alma Adams and Hank Johnson.
The briefing's sponsors, the National Election Defense Coalition and the Transformative Justice Coalition, support the urgent call for a new legislative agenda and political fusion movement to protect democracy, restore voting rights and ensure that every ballot cast is also counted in a secure, public, transparent process.
"There is a very insidious, treacherous and deceitful method of voter suppression, and it has to do with the integrity of the voting process itself."
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http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35846-members-of-congress-call-for-end-to-mass-voter-suppression-and-insecure-elections
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All Democrats should be out en masse demanding total reform of the election process in this country. And making allot of noise after elections ain't going to get it. Shit don't change unless you change it! Put the hammer down and get it done NOW! 
The PTB have the whole fugging thing rigged from top to bottom.
Bernie was going to poke a hole through it for the first time in a long time, but a lot of people have been duped.
That being said, it's only over when you quit trying.
when it was clear this was going on? 
That was my 1st red flag.
Agreed with all of your points. 
Are you listening?
Cher
Would have been nice if this righteous indignation on the part of our elected leaders about voter suppression, election fraud and election rigging had been voiced before the primaries...just saying' ....