The Young Turks on Voter Suppression by Republicans in North Carolina

One of the dodges the Tories have passed in order to try to gain a majority at the next election is changes to the electoral registration law. Despite all their statements to the contrary, that their concerned at voter apathy and the decay of the democracy, these reforms have resulted in 7.5 million people now being left off the electoral registers.

That means that 7.5 million people in our country are disenfranchised in fact, not just in the choice of party to vote for. They can’t vote.

In this, the Conservatives over here seem to be following their Republican counterparts in the US. In this clip, The Young Turks discuss legislation introduced in North Carolina amending voter registration. These laws will – at the time the clip was made, they hadn’t been yet been passed – exclude large numbers of Blacks, the poor and the young from voting. These are the groups that traditionally vote Democrat. At the same time as ordinary voters are being marginalised and discarded, the new voting act appears designed to encourage and strengthen the influence of wealth, corporate donors.

I don’t pretend to understand the intricacies of American democracy and their laws of voter registration, which seem from this to be highly complex. What is clear is that there’s a movement by Conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic to deny the poor, the young and the underprivileged of their democratic freedoms. Cameron and Clegg ain’t doing this on their own.

We desperately need to challenge this, and take back democracy now.

Tags: Blacks, Cameron, Clegg, Democrat Party, Donors, North Carolina, Republican Party, the Rich, The Young Turks, Voter Registration, Young People