Reply #5: CA: Voting forum yields calls for reform [View All]

[EFerrari]

Voting forum yields calls for reform
James Faulk The Times-Standard

ARCATA -- “It all comes down to the vote.”

So declared a sign above the heads of the speakers Tuesday at a forum held at Humboldt State University to discuss perceived problems with national and local democracies.

Roughly 20 people attended the event, where former Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb; retired professor and NAACP official Nate Smith; Measure T campaign manager Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap; and voting advocate Dave Berman spoke on what they believe are the problems with the current system for electing governments.

Smith, soft-spoken and offering a historical perspective on the struggle for voting rights, recalled the long and sometimes brutal battle for blacks and others to gain the right to vote.

He drew connections between the disenfranchising of blacks in the South post-reconstruction and the problems that plagued blacks and other minorities in the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004.

http://www.times-standard.com/local/ci_3701936