Voter suppression and other strategies to rig elections : gerrymandering Imagine this. You are Mr. or Ms. American and you are preparing yourself for the election. You have followed debates over the radio (pestering about a candidate or an other while stuck in traffic jam), the television (and quite frankly you are getting sick of their faces) and the social medias (‘there goes the facebook comments debate again’), but when comes the time to finally put that ballot paper in the ballot box, you find out that your polling site has been removed, and that the new one is more than 20 km away from where you live. Also that there are very little, or no public transportation to get there. For the lack of a car, (or time) the political party you support (or the one you would just rather be in power instead of the other choice) loses one vote. One vote, or more. In the US this is not a bizarre thing. Gerrymandering, as it is called, is a well-known voter suppression strategy. In order for a political party to tip the election in their favor, they will ‘reorganize’ the voting poll map, even suppressing some polling sites to cause discomfort for a certain population of the voters (voting can be a matter of several hours if many voting polls are suppressed), or just to “rearrange” majority groups. For example, Randolph’s county in Georgia is experiencing a very interesting case of terribly unfair gerrymandering. It is a rural, poor and where over 60% (of 7.000) of the population is Black and spread across almost 1.120 km². There currently are nine polling sites, however, and if the Republican party has it its way, seven of those sites will be closed. This, often surprisingly for a foreign audience, is a completely legal action. The Voting Right act, the Article 5 stated that it was forbidden for any state to change affecting voting without express permission from the US Attorney General or the US District court, and it was mandatory to prove to these authorities that this change would not discriminate in any way any minorities. This Article covered a long list of states but in 2013, because of the decision made by the Supreme court in Shelby County v. Holder, a great number of state and counties are no longer covered by Article 5, including : Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Alaska, and many counties in California, Florida, New York (both Bronx counties), North Carolina and South Dakota. A great majority of these states count a fairly large population of minorities. This will be the first election in five decades without the full protection of Article 5. With the article 5 weakened as it now is, other strategies preventing a fair and democratic vote are taking place, including massive ID-checks and other form of creative voter suppression. This article is the first in a thread to explain how and why such strategies take place during US elections, and how these midterm elections are even more involved in these reforms. AuteurSouad Takhtoukh
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