Originally published at: Come Inside the War Room Prepping for SCOTUS to Upend Democracy
For over a decade, no enemy has loomed larger to the Roberts Court than voting protections, especially those for minority groups who have historically been kept away from the polls with laws and violence. The Court in recent years has raised tests for discrimination to unreachable heights, required voters to employ their own mapmakers, put…
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Poll Tax We Hardly Knew Ye
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Thanks for the photo of the 3 Stooges.
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Methinks history will record the ongoing events as a momentous World War among the Abrahamic religions in the Middle East. Its causes too will be traced to the outcomes of the preceding World War II, the incompetence of the United Nations, the election of unhinged, authoritarian right-wing christian jingos, and the rise and virulent spread of jihadi islamic terrorism.
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Unless Democrats grow a spine the next time they run the federal government, democracy will continue to erode.
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Re: Supreme Court Reform
Probably most recognize that something is badly broken … but fixing it will require a thicker skin than the Democratic Party and individual Dems have had in recent decades. They will need to be braced for a flood of op-eds, “news” slants, heavily covered Republican accusations that they are “weaponizing” the Constitution, just exacting “revenge”, “Playing politics”, trying to slant the playing field, etc.
In short, doing things that Republicans have trademarked as their own, very exclusive property and right for decades now. They’re not “hypocrites”; they’re just defending their own “intellectual property.”
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Oh, and nothing about genocidal, single minded, selfish Zionism, which refuses to recognize any borders or any peoples other than its own? Israel has nothing to do with any conflicts in the Middle East?
A modest proposal from not-the-51st-state 
. Perhaps a constructive addition to the debate.
Constitutional right to vote
“Every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly and to be qualified for membership therein.”
Charter of Rights and Freedoms 1982
The Canadian government goes out of its way to make it easy to register to vote, to vote, and to have that vote count. Elections are run by the federal government under rules that are consistent across the country. Most Canadians register to vote by ticking a box on the annual tax return. Polls are readily accessible, as are advance polls and vote-by-mail. We want people to vote. Felons can vote. Students can vote. Indigenous people can vote. Electoral maps are adjusted every ten years based on the census by an independent agency of government. Registration is registration to vote, with no declared party affiliation. Candidates are chosen by the political party organization; there are no primary elections. Rules for provincial elections are set similarly. Universal suffrage applies in both federal and provincial elections.
The concept of voter suppression does not exist. The concept of gerrymandering does not exist; in fact most Canadians recognize it is utterly absurd to allow the party in power to draw electoral maps that favour their party. The notions that there is some sort of difference between gerrymandering along racial lines and gerrymandering along party lines, or that gerrymandering to disadvantage multiple racial groups is different from disenfranchising a single racial group are, to our collective political sensibilities, ridiculous.
Canada became a country in 1867 (the British North America Act), but it became a fully sovereign nation in 1982. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms that we wrote in 1982 has a definite twentieth-century sensibility to it, and consciously aimed to avoid the weaknesses we saw in the US Constitution.
This current crop of Dems don’t have it in them. There may be possible candidates further down the food chain, but I doubt they will be able to come to our rescue in time.