Bob Carr: The US electoral system is a shambles. Systemic voter suppression and rules still being set for an election within days – this is American exceptionalism

By Dilip -

On Monday night the US supreme court voted five to three against allowing more days for counting absentee ballots in Wisconsin. Given difficulties in the postal service, Democrats wanted to see ballots that are cast before close of voting on 3 November received and counted for another six days. This decision, only a week before election day, follows a supreme court decision on 19 October, by four votes to four, to decline a bid by state Republican legislators to stop the count in Pennsylvania extending three days. 

But following Monday’s confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, this could be revisited. Astonishingly, the US is still settling rules for an election due within days. And a national election is being conducted with a patchwork of state laws and regulations. Further, elected state officials – Republican or Democrat office holders – are making decisions about who goes on the roll, how many voting machines go where and how long postal votes will be counted. And all subject to appeal to an acutely partisan court.

Americas descent toward failed-state status

This is American exceptionalism. It confirms the proposition that the US is simply not a democracy, not in the sense western Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Canada are democracies. The point is already made by the electoral college, which in two of the past five presidential elections transmuted Democratic majorities – half a million for Al Gore, 3m for Hillary Clinton – into Republican wins…

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/29/the-us-electoral-system-is-a-shambles-they-could-learn-a-lot-from-australia

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Jonathan Freedland - Donald Trump's plot against democracy could break America apart

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HARRY BLAIN: America’s Wars always Come Home

Jill Lepore  A History of America’s military spending

Jonathan Freedland: Trump is destroying democracy in broad daylight // Chauncey DeVega: Vigilantes are preparing ‘to launch a coup’

America isn't breaking. It was already broken. By Andrew Gawthorpe // Why This Time Is Different. By Dahlia Lithwick

Black and Unarmed and Killed by the Police…an incomplete list…This is America….

Houston Police chief to Trump: Please, keep your mouth shut if you can't be constructive

Donald Trump and American carnage // Will Urban Uprisings Help Trump?

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Justice in America: Authorities are Cracking down Hard on Black Protesters while Treating White Supremacist Reopeners with Kid Gloves

Protests in USA over the death of unarmed black man George Floyd at the hands of police - 25 cities have imposed curfews

Mukul Kesavan - Donald Trump and the global equalization of awfulness

Karl Marx: Letter to Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America; 1865

President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Speech on the American Military Industrial Complex, January 17, 1961

Simi Mehta - Martin Luther King: Changing The World With Love

Adam Lusher - Story of the last survivor of the last slave ship to travel from Africa to US is published after 87 years


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