Portside

The way most of us “participate in electing our political leaders” is by voting. A tiny minority also “participates” by contributing more than $123,200 to federal political campaigns. In 2012, just 591 donors reached that limit on giving to federal candidates. For some perspective, that represents a little more than 0.000002 percent of the U.S. voting age population.

The vast middle class and poor don't have enough purchasing power, as 95 percent of the economy's gains go to the top 1 percent. Some wealthy people and big corporations have a strangle-hold on our politics. "McCutcheon" makes that strangle-hold even tighter. Connect the dots and you see how the big-money takeover of our democracy has lead to an economy that's barely functioning for most Americans.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states and local governments with a history of discrimination no longer needed to submit new voting laws for federal approval. Now, voting rights advocates are trying to put them back under oversight using the courts and Congress.

The North Carolina state conference of the NAACP recently amended their voting rights complaint against the state arguing that the elimination of pre-registration would affect black and brown teens harder than their white peers because they otherwise have less opportunities to register to vote.

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As written, this bill does not protect the rights of racial minorities against discrimination at the polls. The North Carolina State Conference of Branches of the NAACP is not willing to accept any legislation which does not mandate that North Carolina is designated as a covered jurisdiction.

The law hampered the ability of hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians to cast their ballots, with the burden falling most heavily on elderly, disabled and low-income residents

Allsbrook said he believes the bust was done to affect the outcome of several races -- two involving African Americans running for town hall commissioner seats and the re-election of Mayor Patty Almond, a white woman who had the support of the black community.