Donuel, for a lot of the past year, I have not only been watching Australian ABC-TV news, and reading it online, but also watching ABC America news and PBS news on TV, so I have been keeping up with the latest developments in the U.S.

I have to say that the reason I have not raised the issues you listed here is that I thought I couldn't be any more shocked than I was already until I heard about the Republicans' proposed changes in voting laws.

I do believe that it is deliberately targeting the poorer people and people of colour because as McGrath of Harlow said:

"So if your candidate loses by eight million votes, the obvious answer is to find a way of getting those eight million to stop voting, if you know there is no realistic way to get them to vote the other way."

Some of the proposals I have heard include closing voting at 5pm, and as voting occurs on a weekday (why??!!) then people who are in workplaces without flexibility cannot go and stand at a polling station during working hours and risk losing their job, and also volunteers are not allowed to hand out water bottles to the people standing in line. And of course mail-in and pre-poll voting processes are under attack as well, even to the extent of placing drop boxes *inside* the polling place so that the voters still have to stand in line to place their vote in a box.

And another proposed change that I have heard is that proof of identity is being required, or the requirements are being severely tightened, which sounds like common sense on the surface, but I believe that it is more difficult for poorer people including poorer African-Americans to obtain proof of identity. Correct me if I am wrong on that.

Then there was a segment showing historical measures - no longer in place - to put pressure on poorer people and people of colour by requiring a (very convoluted and idiotically difficult) literacy test before being able to register to vote.

I keep saying, in relation to the U.S., "how low can you go?" and then I am shocked, totally gobsmacked, by the next development, and then the next and the next.

I am crossing my fingers hoping that Derek Chauvin is convicted of murdering Mr Floyd, and that the racist attacks against Asian people are reined in, and that firearms laws might finally be sensibly tightened, but more than anything else I am hoping and praying that the whole voting and election process of the U.S. is taken under control at a federal level to stop the whims and caprices of whoever is in control of each state from coercing and controlling the citizens of the U.S. especially when this is based on discrimination against poor people, people of colour, or any other classifications that these legislators choose to target.

Thanks, Donuel, for raising these issues.