Democracy Spring and the US Voting Matrix: How Much of the Electoral Process Is Illusory?

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Democracy Spring and the US Voting Matrix: How Much of the Electoral Process Is Illusory?

Sunday, 24 April 2016 00:00
By Candice Bernd, Truthout | Report


The parallel Democracy Spring and Democracy Awakening mobilizations wrapped their week of sit-ins protesting the corrosive influence of money in politics and voter suppression at the US Capitol on Monday, tallying more than 1,400 arrests.

Launching with a 10-day march from Philadelphia to Washington, DC, the movement hosted rallies, speakers and teach-ins last week, along with lobbying members of Congress. The protests broke the record for the most nonviolent arrests at the Capitol in a single week, culminating Monday with arrests of leaders from the civil rights, labor and environmental movements.

NAACP president Cornell Brooks, Communication Workers of America president Chris Shelton and Greenpeace executive director Annie Leonard were among those who helped lead the Democracy Awakening mobilization on Monday, which also aimed to pressure Republicans to confirm President Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland, to the Supreme Court.

"This is a moment where we are at a crisis point in our democracy. This is a moment where we enter the first presidential election in 50 years, a more than half-century, without the full protection of the Voting Rights Act," Brooks said during a press call before his arrest. "This is a moment where we have the votes of citizens suppressed and stolen before the election, and the votes of legislators bought and sold after the election."

The protests demonstrate the public's demand for deeper participation in the nation's electoral process during an election cycle that will be the most expensive in US history, and in which, for the first time in a presidential election year, 17 states have new voting restrictions in place. Those restrictions have already disenfranchised millions of people -- many of them in New York City, where Tuesday's bungled Primary Day sparked an investigation into the city's Board of Elections, after widespread reports that voters experienced problems in accessing polls or found that they were wrongly removed from voter rolls. New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer's office reported 125,000 voters in Brooklyn were told they were not on the rolls Tuesday. ..........(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35765-the-voting-matrix-how-much-of-democracy-is-an-illusion