The Great U.S. Political Party Tradition: Rally Yours, Disenfranchise Theirs

** By Wendy Norris **

As voter registration deadlines loom, there remain the uniquely American tangle of obstacles to citizens across the country who hope to cast ballots. From reading tests and ID challenges to felon disenfranchisement laws and the endless purging of voter rolls, the U.S. is almost alone among industrial world democracies in having no uniform federal voting law, says Laura Flanders of GritTV.

See more video discussions and election protection news stories at Live From Main Street, a project of The Media Consortium of which the Center for Independent Media is a member.

Read More at the Colorado Independent, where this story originally appeared.

Comments

[robXdion]

They are REALLY doing verbal gymnastics to avoid the loooooooooong history of white efforts to keep blacks from voting thru violence, subversion, KKK, cheating, and the fact that all these ID laws, poll tests, and literacy requirements were directed to keep blacks from voting. The small history of keeping immigrants from voting was a small regional drop in the bucket compared to the widespread NATIONAL unspoken effort to keep blacks disenfranchised. To offer that as equal parity to what blacks went thru is pathetic. Isn't that why we have specific Constitutional amendments and laws just to allow blacks the right to vote? For me, to see people try so hard to keep from telling the truth is as offensive as the initial offense.

[SilviaMaria]

Now this is the kind of journalist I would like to see in our cable TV.

This country needs a unified voting election. No doubt. It is just ridiculous that each State has its own rules and regulations and like they were saying instead of helping you out to vote they want you to stay home. In Spain, where I came from, there is only one election law for everybody and you do not need to register to vote; the Government actually sends you a card with your information and your voting place. How do they know we can vote? I guess that once you are born they put your name in a computer database; or maybe it is the ID card we get at 14, or the census they do time and again ... I do not know, the only thing I know is that you get the voting card, regardless of foreclosures, race, sex, etc. And we have paper ballots, no machines (people in my country will reject the machines because of fraud and manipulation).

[toochie50]

troo a m e r i c a n
i agree so whole-heartedly - i wish we could have an outside, neutral country - organize our voting yes.
Maybe Germany or France - the Germans are such leaders in the latest and most advanced electronic ideas.

[astein1]

This seems to be the only country in the world where we are more concerned about hundreds of people voting twice than hundreds of thousands being able to vote even once.

[jhb90277]

Beautifully put, however sad the statement itself really is. You packed some weighty truth into that one sentence.

[DoTheMath]

How can we start a movement to ask an international organization to oversee the fairness of our election? Of course, the oversight would never really happen, but a movement would draw attention to the problems. It would place those who resist such oversight in the position of defending voter suppression tactics or eliminating them.

[TrooAmerican]

Yes we lead the World in corruption, fraud, and stupidity in the name of making rich people richer while telling everyone we are free and have great opportunities.