Politics

Thom Hartmann -Republicans know most Americans aren’t fans of tax cuts for billionaires, more pollution, deregulation of polluting industries, high-priced drugs, privatizing Medicare, ending Social Security, criminalizing abortion and birth control, student debt, hating on Black and queer people, and the GOP’s war on unions and working people. So, to win elections across the country this fall and secure the White House for Donald Trump, they’re removing millions of mostly Black and Brown voters from the rolls. This started in a big way with Georgia and Texas, but the practice has now metastasized to nearly 30 Republican-controlled states across the country. As Congressman Jamie Raskin points out, while at least 135 countries in the world have written an affirmative right to vote into their constitutions,  “[by] my count, only Azerbaijan, Chechnya, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Pakistan, Singapore, and, of course, the United Kingdom … still leave voting rights out of their constitutions and therefore to the whims of state officials.”This led Congressman Mark Pocan, D-Wisconsin (and cosponsors), to propose a simple amendment to the Constitution. In 2013, they introduced into Congress amending legislation that said:“Every citizen of the United States, who is of legal voting age, shall have the fundamental right to vote in any public election held in the jurisdiction in which the citizen resides.”