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Oklahoma starting its biannual move to purge voting lists

Thousands of Oklahomans will be purged from the voter rolls this month under a state law permitting government officials to remove people who haven't voted in several years and don't respond to address confirmation mailings.

The last such purge, in April 2017, deleted 13 percent of the people then registered – more than 291,000 out of 2.2 million, according to records Oklahoma Watch obtained from the state Election Board. Of that amount, more than half were deleted due to inactivity. Of those, 46 percent were Democrats although members of that party make up 39 percent of registered voters.


Six other states give similar power to election officials to cull the rolls of inactive voters. Oklahoma drops people who haven't voted in eight years and don't answer several mailings from the state. The biggest states with such "use it or lose it" rules, Ohio and Georgia, allow election officials to purge voters after a six-year period of inactivity.

The House's comprehensive political process overhaul, HR 1, would restrict states from pursuing such policies. But last year the Supreme Court ruled, 5-4, that Ohio's law did not violate the Voting Right Act.


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The People Who Built Chicago Deserve to Breathe

Marcelina Pedraza at a UAW strike in 2025 (Oscar Sanchez, SETF)

Photo provided

The People Who Built Chicago Deserve to Breathe

As union electricians, we wire this city. My siblings in the trades pour the concrete, hoist the steel, lay the pipe and keep the lights on. We build Chicago block by block, shift after shift. We go home to the neighborhoods we help create.

I live on the Southeast Side with my family. My great-grandparents immigrated from Mexico and taught me to work hard, be loyal and kind and show up for my neighbors. I’m proud of those roots. I want my child to inherit a home that’s safe, not a ZIP code that shortens their lives, like most Latino communities in Chicago.

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Why Greenland and ICE Could Spell the End of U.S. Empire
world map chart
Photo by Morgan Lane on Unsplash

Why Greenland and ICE Could Spell the End of U.S. Empire

Since the late 15th century, the Americas have been colonized by the Spanish, French, British, Portuguese, and the United States, among others. This begs the question: how do we determine the right to citizenship over land that has been stolen or seized? Should we, as United States citizens today, condone the use of violence and force to remove, deport, and detain Indigenous Peoples from the Americas, including Native American and Indigenous Peoples with origins in Latin America? I argue that Greenland and ICE represent the tipping point for the legitimacy of the U.S. as a weakening world power that is losing credibility at home and abroad.

On January 9th, the BBC reported that President Trump, during a press briefing about his desire to “own” Greenland, stated that, “Countries have to have ownership and you defend ownership, you don't defend leases. And we'll have to defend Greenland," Trump told reporters on Friday, in response to a question from the BBC. The US will do it "the easy way" or "the hard way", he said. During this same press briefing, Trump stated, “The fact that they had a boat land there 500 years ago doesn't mean that they own the land.”

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Trials Show Successful Ballot Initiatives Are Only the Beginning of Restoring Abortion Access

Anti-choice lawmakers are working to gut voter-approved amendments protecting abortion access.

Trials Show Successful Ballot Initiatives Are Only the Beginning of Restoring Abortion Access

The outcome of two trials in the coming weeks could shape what it will look like when voters overturn state abortion bans through future ballot initiatives.

Arizona and Missouri voters in November 2024 struck down their respective near-total abortion bans. Both states added abortion access up to fetal viability as a right in their constitutions, although Arizonans approved the amendment by a much wider margin than Missouri voters.

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