It is exhaustively identified, from arbitrary voting ID, to lack of voting facilities, to repressive regulations when waiting to vote.
It is so egregious it is recognised as a matter of fact in, I suppose, what must be MAGAT leftist international media.
2. Voter suppression
Huge turnout in the 2020 election was all the more impressive given barriers to voting. “We have seen this cycle an effort by the Republican party to make it harder, wherever possible, to vote – especially for black and minority populations,” Bassin said.
He added: “I don’t know of another advanced democracy in the world where one of the two major political parties has invested in voter suppression as a core strategy.”
Among the tactics on display were inaccurate purges of citizens from voter rolls, Trump’s active undermining of the US Postal Service, and malicious robocalls in areas with large black populations such as Flint, Michigan.
The downtown Harris county clerk’s office in Houston, Texas, which was banned from serving as a mail ballot drop-off site after Governor Greg Abbott issued an order limiting each county to one site. Photograph: Callaghan O’Hare/Reuters
One of the most egregious examples of voter suppression this cycle was in Florida. In 2018 Floridians handed back the right to vote to those with felony convictions, technically welcoming 1.4 million people back into democratic participation.
Florida’s Republicans immediately set about undermining the will of the electorate, putting in place a bureaucratic maze that former felons had to negotiate before they could vote. It was so convoluted that almost 900,000 people were still disenfranchised on election day – including about one in every six black Floridians of voting age.
Combatting voter suppression is central to HR1, the democracy reform bill championed by the Democrats in Congress. But for the past 245 days it has been stymied in the Senate by Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader, and pending two runoff elections in Georgia he is likely to continue to be a roadblock.
In that case focus is likely to shift over the next two years to the US justice department which has become virtually inactive in this area under Trump. Under Biden, the DoJ can be expected to re-engage, enforcing access to voting and prosecuting election-law violations.
America's flawed democracy: the five key areas where it is failing
The US system has survived four years of a norm-busting president by the skin of its teeth – which areas need most urgent attention?
www.theguardian.com
