Voting can secure incremental change, but liberation requires taking on racial capitalism and white supremacy.
Voting Wrongs
In name, the United States is a democracy, but in practice, many millions of people are disenfranchised — whether because of felony convictions, undocumented status, onerous state and local voting restrictions, or other structural barriers. Partisan, racist gerrymandering manipulates districts, stifling the voting power of whole communities. Meanwhile, archaic mechanisms like the Electoral College prevent the votes of all people from being truly counted. Fortunately, activists around the country are working hard to gain the ballot — and make it count — for everyone in this country. A critical election looms in 2020. At this historic moment, Truthout begins a new series, “Voting Wrongs,” to expose the injustices that disenfranchise vast numbers of people — and the bold efforts that seek to transform the way the United States does “democracy.”
Georgia was the first state to hand management of its elections over to a partisan, private company.
Kobach’s Crosscheck name-matching algorithm “produced false positives more than 99 percent of the time.”
Republicans are erecting new voting barriers as young people begin to flex their electoral muscle.
The only thing Republicans are more invested in than Trump is figuring out how to get less people to vote.
A wave of polling place closures has swept 13 states since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act.
Without changing existing power relationships, restoring voting rights for people in prison is meaningless.
The United States continues to deprive many people of this basic civic tool.
Fines related to jail sentences make the right to vote unaffordable for millions of formerly incarcerated people.
Shutting out parolees from the two most basic civic institutions, the jury and the ballot, threatens democracy.