robert reich
Tag: Election
EC Should Address Longstanding Questions on the EVM
Election Commission of India appears to be more interested in technology than democracy. The latter, they have taken for granted, perhaps abiding by the diktat of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, that India is the ‘mother of all democracies.’
The ECI is, at present, busy with preparations for the hosting of a global conference on ‘Initiatives in the use of Technology in Elections’ scheduled for January 23-26, 2023. The conference is dedicated to the cause of ‘enhancing voter participation through technology integration.’
While showing excessive obsession with technology, ECI has disregarded the non-compliance to ‘democracy principles’ in EVM voting and counting which is destroying the sanctity of India’s electoral process. These ‘democracy principles’ stipulate that each voter has the knowledge and capacity to verify that his or her vote is cast-as-intended, recorded-as-cast and counted-as-recorded.
ECI is also deliberately ignoring the fact that technology-obsession is morphing India’s democracy from the will of the people to the whim of the machines.
As if to rub it in, ECI has announced its plan for remote voting for domestic migrants saying that it has developed a prototype Multi-Constituency Remote Electronic Voting
— source thewire.in | M.G. Devasahayam | 06/Jan/2023
Indigenous Voters’ Voting Rights Are Under Attack
Indigenous voters played a key role in Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 when they helped him win Arizona, but now face a sweeping rollback of their voting rights. This comes as the top Republican candidates in close races in Arizona are 2020 election deniers, including the gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Blake Masters, who’s running for U.S. Senate against Senator Mark Kelly.
Last year, a Supreme Court ruling in the case Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, which came out of Arizona, allowed the state to ban ballot collection from outside set precincts, which is a method that’s widely used by Native voters in Arizona. The move is expected to suppress their vote.
For more, we’re joined by The New Yorker magazine staff writer Sue Halpern, who spoke to voters on Arizona’s Navajo, Apache and Hopi reservations for The New Yorker in a new piece headlined “The Political Attack on the Native American Vote.” She’s also a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College, and she’s joining us from Exeter, New Hampshire, where there is a key Senate contest going on between Maggie Hassan and General Bolduc. Also with us, in Fort Apache, Arizona, is Lydia Dosela, the matriarch coordinator for the
— source democracynow.org | Nov 08, 2022
US Billionaires Have Pumped Nearly $900,000,000 Into Midterms
With under a week until the U.S. midterm elections, Americans for Tax Fairness revealed Thursday that billionaires have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into campaigns this cycle, largely to benefit Republican candidates.
“A torrent of billionaire cash is drowning our democracy,” declared Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF). “Money talks when it comes to influencing candidates and winning elections, and the loudest voices by far are billionaires pushing for lower taxes so they can accumulate even greater wealth and have even more power and influence.”
“If we are going to have an economy that works for everyone, billionaires need to start paying their fair share,” Clemente added. “And if we are going to have a democracy that works for everyone, we need to greatly curb the influence of billionaire money in our politics.”
Based on an analysis of Federal Election Commission (FEC) data from OpenSecrets, ATF found that through the end of September, “465 American billionaires have pumped over $881
— source commondreams.org | Jessica Corbett | Apr 7, 2022
Why Is AIPAC Spending Millions to Beat Democratic Socialist Summer Lee
Today is the final full day of campaigning before the midterm elections that will determine which party will control the House and Senate.
In Texas, the former labor organizer and Austin City Councilmember Greg Casar is running in a district that stretches from San Antonio to Austin.
In Illinois, Democrat Delia Ramirez is running in the newly redrawn 3rd District. She’s a progressive state representative, the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants.
And in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, state Representative Summer Lee, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, is running on the Democratic ticket to replace the retiring longtime congressman, Democrat Mike Doyle. The race has confused many voters, because Lee’s Republican opponent has the same name as the Democratic lawmaker who is retiring: Mike Doyle. And his latest ad doesn’t say he’s a Republican, but says “a name you can trust.” AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, has spent millions of dollars trying to defeat Summer Lee. The group’s political action committee, the United Democracy Project, spent close to $3 million during the primary against Lee, has now spent over $680,000
— source democracynow.org | Nov 07, 2022
The Votes That Weren’t Cast
The fundamental right to vote has been a core value of Black politics since the colonial era — and so has the effort to suppress that vote right up to the present moment. In fact, the history of the suppression of Black voters is a first-rate horror story that as yet shows no sign of ending.
While Democrats and progressives justifiably celebrated the humbling defeat of some of the most notorious election-denying Republican candidates in the 2022 midterms, the GOP campaign to quell and marginalize Black voters has only continued with an all-too-striking vigor. In 2023, attacks on voting rights are melding with the increasingly authoritarian thrust of a Republican Party ever more aligned with far-right extremists and outright white supremacists.
It shouldn’t be forgotten that the insurrection of January 6, 2021, at the Capitol in Washington was also an assault on minority voters. In the post-election weeks of 2020, insurrection-loving and disgraced President Donald Trump and his allies sought to discard votes in swing-state cities like Atlanta, Detroit, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Phoenix. Those were all places with large Black, Latino, or Native American populations. It was no accident then that the overwhelmingly white mob at the Capitol didn’t hesitate to hurl racist language, including the “N” word, at Black police officers as that mob invaded the building.
For years, Republican lawmakers at the state level had proposed — and where possible implemented — voter suppression laws and policies whose impacts were sharply felt in
— source tomdispatch.com | Clarence Lusane | Feb 2, 2023
“Election Police” to Intimidate Florida Voters
Republicans like Governor Ron DeSantis are attempting to scare formerly incarcerated people with felony convictions from voting. DeSantis launched an election police force to arrest people on trumped-up voter fraud charges. The arrests overwhelmingly targeted Black people and demonstrate “the state’s failure to have a system in place that can assure any American citizen that lives in the state of Florida whether or not they’re eligible to vote,” says Meade, who spearheaded an initiative to reenfranchise 1.4 million people with prior felony convictions, before it was overturned by Republicans. While several charges of alleged voter fraud in past elections have been dismissed, Meade says the arrests still intimidate qualified voters from casting a ballot.
Republicans are still trying to scare former felons away from voting, even as trumped-up charges of voter fraud in past elections have been dismissed in the lead-up to the
— source democracynow.org | Oct 28, 2022