The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a major milestone for civil rights activists, but in the 55 years since, African American voters have been systematically disenfranchised from the ballot box.  Now a new generation of African American women and men — including GA Dem Stacey Abrams, former First Lady Michelle Obama, and former AG Eric Holder —  are leading the way to make sure that US elections are fair. None h ...

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The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a major milestone for civil rights activists, but in the 55 years since, African American voters have been systematically disenfranchised from the ballot box. 

Now a new generation of African American women and men — including GA Dem Stacey Abrams, former First Lady Michelle Obama, and former AG Eric Holder —  are leading the way to make sure that US elections are fair.

None have endorsed a Democratic presidential candidate; the work each of them has been doing is larger than winning any particular election. 

They would argue that an election cannot be fairly won if the process itself is unfair and leaves out large swaths of the population.

Perhaps nobody knows the impact of voter suppression and other dirty tricks as well as Stacey Abrams. She was one fair election away from becoming the first female African American governor

Authors Website: http://www.opednews.com/author/author79.html

Authors Bio:

Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which since 2005 existed for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. Our goal: to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Because the problems with electronic (computerized) voting systems include a lack of transparency and the ability to accurately check and authenticate the vote cast, these systems can alter election results and therefore are simply antithetical to democratic principles and functioning.



Since the pivotal 2004 Presidential election, Joan has come to see the connection between a broken election system, a dysfunctional, corporate media and a total lack of campaign finance reform. This has led her to enlarge the parameters of her writing to include interviews with whistle-blowers and articulate others who give a view quite different from that presented by the mainstream media. She also turns the spotlight on activists and ordinary folks who are striving to make a difference, to clean up and improve their corner of the world. By focusing on these intrepid individuals, she gives hope and inspiration to those who might otherwise be turned off and alienated. She also interviews people in the arts in all their variations - authors, journalists, filmmakers, actors, playwrights, and artists. Why? The bottom line: without art and inspiration, we lose one of the best parts of ourselves. And we're all in this together. If Joan can keep even one of her fellow citizens going another day, she considers her job well done.


When Joan hit one million page views, OEN Managing Editor, Meryl Ann Butler interviewed her, turning interviewer briefly into interviewee. Read the interview here.

While the news is often quite depressing, Joan nevertheless strives to maintain her mantra: "Grab life now in an exuberant embrace!"


Joan has been Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews since December, 2005. Her articles also appear at Huffington Post, RepublicMedia.TV and Scoop.co.nz.