KRISTEN CLARKE: Right. So, there are about half the country -- about half of states around the country have closed primaries or some version of a closed primary. You know, the issue in New York is that we don't have real notice and communication, clear communication, to voters about the rules and about the deadlines. And often these deadlines are so far out that voters aren't even focused on the process. Part of this election overhaul needs to be putting more resources into the hands of local boards of elections, so that they can be held accountable and so that they have the ability to give and impart accurate and clear information to voters, so that they know what the rules are and know what the deadlines are.
The New York City Board of Elections, I think that it's been a fiasco this cycle. They issued notice to about 42,000 new voters, advertising the primary election in the fall. That notice had the wrong date. They issued a second notice that had the correct date of the primary but failed to mention yesterday's primary happening on April 19th, and then had to do a third notice to voters that made clear the April 19th primary and the primary happening this fall. These kinds of problems are intolerable. They lock people out of the process. If people don't have accurate and clear information about when to vote and what they need to vote, then we ultimately are disenfranchising voters, and that should not be tolerated. So, part of this election overhaul that we need requires putting more hands into local boards of elections, putting more resources into local boards of elections, so that they have the ability to do their job right.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And finally, Mark Weisbrot, I'd like to ask you about this issue of the closed primary. There are those who say, "Well, political parties exist as separate organizations, and if you want to participate in the selection of that party's candidate, you should be a member of the party." You know, now, admittedly, a year beforehand is far too long for someone to be able to switch their registration. But the issue of whether parties should be able to restrict, as some states do, the selection of their candidates only to party members?
MARK WEISBROT: Yeah, I think -- I think it's much better if you have more participation in the country, especially -- you know, you can make a case if this were more of a parliamentary system or you didn't have this two-party system, where they're basically like state institutions in the sense that it's so difficult, almost impossible, for a third party to have a chance. Then, you really should have these primaries as open as possible. And, you know, this country really is what it is today in a large part because of disenfranchisement. If you had voter participation rates like you have in Europe or even some, you know, middle-income developing countries, you'd have a very different electorate.
And, of course, the Republican Party knows that. That's their main strategy for survival, is all about disenfranchisement. You know, they use the control over the state legislatures and the governors to redistrict and to -- you know, this big offensive to disenfranchise people. That's their strategy for going forward. And so, we really need voter reform, I would say, at least as much as campaign finance reform. We'd really see a very different politics in this country if we -- if people voted.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you all for being with us, Kristen Clarke in Washington, president and executive director of the national Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, lawyers' committee leading the Election Protection program, which operates a voter hotline during elections; also, Virginia Fields, president and CEO of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS, former borough president of Manhattan; and, finally, Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and president of Just Foreign Policy. His book, Failed: What the Experts Got Wrong About the Global Economy.
Mark, we'd like to ask you to stay, because we're going south next, from Brooklyn to Brazil, to the impeachment of Brazil's president. Is it a coup? That's what we'll be talking about in New York and Rio de Janeiro. This is Democracy Now! We'll be back in a minute.
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