Six million voters banned from the ballot box in the US
Last Tuesday, NPR, CNN, Mother Jones and several other news outlets confirmed that more than 120,000 voters have been purged from the rolls in Brooklyn (Sanders' birthplace).
In what appears to be a major controversy in an election year, Democracy Now and Vice News separately report on systemic voter disenfranchisement in the US:
In new York, millions of New Yorkers were not able to vote, thanks to the state’s restrictive voting laws. The state has no early voting, no Election Day registration, and excuse-only absentee balloting. The voter registration deadline for the primary closed 25 days ago, before any candidate had even campaigned in New York. Meanwhile, independent or unaffiliated voters had to change their party registrations back in October—over 190 days ago—to vote in today’s closed Democratic or Republican primaries.
VICE News spends time with Steven Johnson, a man who has a parole life sentence, as he educates his fellow parolees about their voting rights, and is fighting to get the law changed in New York.
In this year's US presidential election, there will be 6 million people banned from the ballot box because they have felony convictions. Almost half of these people aren't currently incarcerated, and are taxpaying citizens who are on parole or probation. In New York, felons get their voting rights back after they complete parole, but those with life on parole will never be able to vote again.
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