The October 13 Democratic presidential debate held in Las Vegas was two hours long, but not one minute was devoted to voting rights, or problems with voting practices. This is somewhat surprising, because Democrats have been vocal about some voting rights problems. In 1984 the Democratic National Convention passed a resolution that said, “Be it further resolved that the Democratic Party of the United States recognizes the right to vote as the most fundamental of all rights in our democracy. And no duty of the Party is more important than protecting the sanctity of this right.”
Of course, part of the blame for the absence of voting in the debate is that the moderators didn’t choose to ask about the issue. The United States is the only nation in the world that holds elections and yet denies a voting representative for citizens who live in the national capital. The United States is the only nation in the world that prevents persons from voting because they committed a crime in the past. The United States is the only nation considered free and democratic that has general election ballots that, by law, only contain two candidates. The United States is the only nation in the world that has an overseas territory of more than 500,000 people that has no voting representation in the national legislature. The United States is the only nation that holds a popular election for head of government and permits the person who polled the most votes to fail to take the office, whereas the person who polls the second-highest number of votes can sometimes take the office.
There are other voting rights problems as well. The Republican presidential debates of August and September 2015 didn’t mention voting rights problems either.