As the midterm cycle comes to a close, the amount of people able to actually vote has decreased. This decline in registered voters is not out of apathy of the American public, or because the country is full of people who have had their legal right to vote taken away. The decrease in registered voters comes from the political and seditious schemes of politicians and the elite. This voter suppression is not attacking the American public evenly, but is an attack on communities of minorities and the working poor.

Since the last election, Donald Trump has claimed that millions of people who voted were not citizens of the United States and that there were millions of cases of voter fraud. This is patently untrue; for example, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach headed the Voter Fraud Commission created on this pretense. Kobach was only able to find nine cases of voter fraud and managed only one conviction. The commission was disbanded due to so many lawsuits against it, as a result of it only requesting voter information for people of color, particularly African-Americans.

Brian Kemp of Georgia also used this pretense to create “Crossguard,” a measure against alleged voter fraud that has shown itself to be racially motivated and predicated on falsehoods. Under this program, 700,000 voters were purged from being able to vote. The great majority of these voters are black. Many actions in the state to register voters have also been halted. In Jefferson County, a bus of black senior citizens headed to register to vote was stopped by the state police.

These kinds of actions have become easier for states to carry out since the 2013 Supreme Court decision in County v. Holder. This ruling allowed states to change their voter screening and purging without the approval of the federal government.

In North Dakota, many Native Americans live on reservations and must use P.O. Boxes to receive their mail as their place of living does not receive mail delivery. New North Dakota law restricts voter eligibility to those with a residential mailing address, disenfranchising many Native American citizens.

This attack on the U.S. voter must not go unchallenged. The reactionary power interests are working towards keeping the minority vote, the vote of the most oppressed, exploited and targeted of the U.S. citizenry out of the polls. The reactionaries fear that the numbers will put them out of office. The American elite fear a politically active populace. A passive citizenry has always been needed to maintain a liberal society.  If the working masses of the country were to get politically involved, it would become very clear very soon that the political establishment is meant to work against them, and then the working masses will begin to work against it. The time to begin that process is now, in the face of fascist aggression, and the corruption of the last illusions of American democracy by the self-serving rich.

Categories: Elections, U.S. News