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And this is a lesson in democracy?

The US is hell-bent on bringing democracy to anywhere in the world, especially the Middle East. The Australian Treasurer just last week solemnly pronounced that the Iraq War was intended to bring democracy to Iraq.

Now.....voting is part of the democratic process! Right? Well, yes, but perhaps not in America itself - as this piece in AlterNet clearly explains. There they are trying to cull the voter-lists and even dissuade people from having the right to vote. All shades, again, of the chicanery which characterised the US elections in 1999 and 2003.

"The Justice Department is pressuring 10 states to purge their voter rolls, while states are ignoring laws to help low-income Americans register to vote.

State welfare offices across the country are not offering millions of low-income Americans the opportunity to register to vote when applying for public assistance despite a federal law requiring them to do so, according to an analysis of a recent federal voting registration report and experts who say the Department of Justice and states are to blame.

"It's huge. It's another area where the administration is failing us," said Donna Brazile, chair of the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute, speaking of the Department of Justice's oversight of the nation's voter registration laws. "They are not pushing states to recognize their voter registration responsibilities."

At the same time, the Justice Department's Voting Section, which enforces voting rights and supervises elections in some states, is pressuring 10 states to do more to purge voter rolls -- or remove ineligible voters -- before the 2008 presidential election, according to letters sent to state election officials this spring."

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