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This article was originally published by the Center for Public Integrity , a nonprofit investigative news organization based in Washington, D.C., from their excellent series " Barriers to the Ballot Box ". Analysis: New And Age-Old Voter Suppression Tactics At The Heart Of The 2020 Power Struggle Making voting harder is about grabbing even more disproportionate power and delaying the impact of shifting demographics. By Matt DeRienzo, Editor-in-Chief, Public Integrity, October 28, 2020 "You will not replace us!" The words chanted in 2017 by tiki torch-wielding white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, get right to the heart of what voter disenfranchisement tactics are all about in the 2020 election. Non-Hispanic white people are a shrinking percentage of the U.S. population and won't be a majority within a few decades . They've held on to grossly disproportionate political power and wealth through discriminatory tactics that go back hundreds of years...

Election day in the U.S. tomorrow. My American family and friends are all quietly freaking out. The whole world is quietly freaking out.  The massive turnout through mail-in voting and advance polling are very good signs. Thousands who didn't vote in 2016 have already voted in 2020. Personally, I think it will be an anti-Trump landslide in the popular vote, and a decisive win in the electoral vote. Not that anyone should put any faith in what I believe! In 2016, I told anyone who would listen that the Republican party would never nominate Donald Trump, then declared that there was no way he would be elected. I'm in good company there: no less a maven than Fran Lebovitz did the same .  The biggest question isn't the outcome of  November 3. It's what happens on November 4th, and 5th, and 10th, and months on, until January 20, and possibly beyond.  Trump has been inciting his minions to question the legitimacy of the election, and as the results come in, that will onl...

  I've said it before and I'll say it again: Donald Trump is the single greatest gift the Democratic Party could ever hope to receive.  The Democrats have finally achieved their most sought-after position: every thinking person must now vote Democrat, no matter what. They can now run whoever they want with whatever consequences that will have, because the alternative is an existential threat to the country itself. Both parties, of course, have always been an existential threat to other countries, but this time every person living in the Empire is up against it. And this will be the gift that keeps on giving for as long as the party exists. All hope of organizing and building an alternative has ended, certainly for as long as can be forecast.  All the Democrats have to do is overcome the vote suppression, election fraud, threats of violence, actual violence, and the Electoral College , and they're safe from democracy and progressive thought forever. It's no small task, ...

How To Be An Antiracist is an important, powerful, thought-provoking book. With unflinching precision, Ibram X. Kendi defines the roots of racism and explains how we can work to eliminate it. The structure of the book is disarming: the explanatory chapters are interwoven with the story of Kendi's personal journey from racist thinking to antiracist thinking. Yes, the author is Black, and he has had racist thoughts, and has engaged in racist behaviours.  He spares no mercy for himself as he looks back, cringing at his beliefs -- although understanding the tradition that they grew from. I hope Kendi's openness and his willingness to publicly criticize himself helps more readers approach his ideas with an open mind and less defensiveness. Kendi believes that our typical conception of racism as a product of fear and ignorance is wrong, and he makes a very strong case for that belief. He shows that racist policies are made by racist people in order to further their own interests. Ra...

Here are some facts about US elections. There are mountains of evidence to support each of these. If you have doubts, do some homework. This is merely a summary of facts. 1. The Electoral College. Up to 50% of votes in any state are wiped out. Canada has first-past-the-post voting based on ridings (Parliamentary seats), but imagine if all of Ontario was one riding -- 51% and winner take all. 2. Partisan oversight. Elections are governed on the state level, and the person in charge of them represents a political party. There is no equivalent of Elections Canada. Imagine, for example, if Jason Kenney's party ran elections in Alberta, and oversaw vote-counting and potential recounts. 3. Voter suppression. This takes place on a dozen different fronts. In many states, registration is complex and very limited. There are onerous ID requirements. Voters can be and are disqualified based on any number of arcane laws. Voter list are "purged" -- hundreds of thousands of voters dro...

The freak show that is the Donald Trump presidency gives us so many things to lament, and mourn, and goggle at. But for one organization, it is a singular gift, valuable beyond all measure: that is the Democratic National Committee. For me, the worst part of the Trump presidency is not Trump. It is the enormous setback to -- maybe the death of, in my lifetime -- building a progressive alternative in the United States. Four decades of deindustrialization, job loss, corporate welfare, and ever-widening income inequality has brought progressive economic ideas to the forefront in the US, and has rejuvenated the appetite for making them a reality. The evidence is plentiful , from the fight for a $15/hour minimum wage to the jubilant crowds that greeted Bernie Sanders at every campaign stop. People are hungry for change, and many people are hungry for change from the left. Fill in the blanks. A vote for ____ is a vote for ____. And now we have Trump. Hillary Clinton supporters -- and of cour...

Since I'm making an effort to put more of my thoughts here, I'm gathering up a bunch of my Facebook posts and responses. If we know each other on Facebook, apologies for the repetition. I find much of the analysis and commentary I've seen about the recent US election to be quite strange. Donald Trump has been elected President of the United States. That happened. Here's what didn't happen. 1. "The United States is a democracy. The people chose Trump, end of story." 60,467,601 US voters chose Hillary Clinton. 60,072,551 US voters chose Donald Trump. More than 100,000,000 Americans eligible to vote did not vote. More than 5 million Americans cannot vote because they are either incarcerated or have been incarcerated, and thus have been disenfranchised. There has been rampant voter suppression and vote fraud in both the primaries and the general election. The United States is also a democracy if you close your eyes and stop up your ears. Some views on winn...

I trust by now you've all heard about Stephen Harper's latest plan to undermine democracy in Canada, his electoral reform bill that the chief electoral officer of the country has called an affront to democracy. Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand told CBC: "My reading of the act is that I can no longer speak about democracy in this country." Now, as per usual, the Harpercrats want to pass the bill before it can be properly debated. It was just introduced a few days ago, but could be adopted by the House of Commons as early as today or tomorrow. The so-called Fair Elections Act would: - make it more difficult for people to vote, - would disproportionately impact students and youth, Indigenous people, seniors, people on low-incomes, and people who didn’t vote Conservative in previous elections, - do nothing to bring to justice the people behind the widespread election fraud in 2011, and - would actually make it harder to catch perpetrators of election fraud. The Counc...

This week, pollster Nik Nanos revealed that 51.5% of Canadian voters would not consider voting for the Conservative party, compared to 36.4% only seven months ago. I don't play the national pastime - election prediction - so I won't speculate about if or how this poll will translate on the ground. Whether we'll have to wait until 2015 to get rid of this corrupt, fraudulent, anti-democracy, anti-human, anti-labour, anti-environment, corporate government - and whether Canadian voters will be hoodwinked by another party with almost identical policies but a friendlier face (and famous last name) - remains to be seen. Meanwhile, all we can do is educate and mobilize. In Egypt yesterday, nearly as many people as live in our entire country were in the streets , demanding the "president" resign. In Brazil, people who live in the vast favelas (shantytowns) joined the massive, ongoing protests  that overshadowed the football tournament. Compared to these inspiring example...

While everyone's been glued to Rob Ford's crack and Mike Duffy's featherbedding, something even more important happened: the Federal Court confirmed that there was election fraud in the 2011 federal election. Not just "robocalls" - that diminutive buzzword that the media clings to - but election fraud : a deliberate, targeted attempt at voter suppression. The conservative media has framed the ruling as a victory for the Harper Government TM , because the court stopped short of nullifying the election results. But the ruling was very clear . Judge Richard Mosley wrote: I find that electoral fraud occurred during the 41st General Election. Some important and potentially damning details still have not been revealed. Who had access to the Conservative Party's database? Who orchestrated and authorized the election fraud? Let's join the Council of Canadians in demanding the Conservative Party answer those questions. They won't do it, of course. But let'...

Linda McQuaig recently wrote an excellent column about the blatantly false portrayal of the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in the Western mainstream media. Chavez should be a hero to anyone who cares about social justice, but if your primary news sources are anywhere from CNN to the CBC to the New York Times , you might wonder why millions of Latin Americans mourned Chavez's passing rather than celebrating. You might imagine they were in the thrall of a charismatic tyrant. I found the mainstream media's description of Chavez as a "dictator" particularly rich, given the US endured at least two fraudulent elections in recent times. Toronto activist Judy Rebick had this excellent letter in the Globe and Mail : Your front-page article on the death of Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez (Death Of A Revolutionary – March 6), calls him “a polarizing dictator.” He was certainly polarizing, as is our own Prime Minister, but Mr. Chavez was never a dictator. Mr. Chavez wa...