Protecting Voting Rights

In this video, US Senator Dick Durbin, the senior US Senator from my home state of Illinois (full disclosure: I've voted proudly for Senator Durbin), questions US Attorney General Eric Holder about what the US Department of Justice will do to stop the illegal voting roll purges in Florida, in particular. The Republican Governor in that state has ordered purges of voters who he says are not citizens, even though in fact they overwhelmingly have been citizens—as well as registered Democrats and Independents. Funny coincidence, that. Attorney General Holder says they’re going to take Florida to court.

What Senator Durbin is talking about here is, next to union-busting, the biggest priority of Republican officials in various states: Voter suppression. The Republicans have been trying to make it hard for Democratic-leaning voters to vote, as well as busting unions so as to cut off the only major source of funding and volunteers for Democratic candidates.

This will become one of the biggest political issues in the USA, in this post-Citizens United world. I’ll be returning to it again in the future, so this video is sort of an introduction.