The United Nations Human Rights Council Forum on Minority Issues, Second Session November 13, 2009 Palais des Nations Geneva, Switzerland Statement of Laura W. Murphy Senior Advisor, Campaign for a New Domestic Human Rights Agenda & President, Laura Murphy & Associates Thank you Madam Chair, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, and Madam Independent Expert on Minority Issues, Gay McDougall, for convening this extraordinary second session of the Forum on Minority Issues that has as its focus minorities and effective political participation. I am here representing my decades of activism on voting rights issues in the United States and to also represent the Campaign for a New Domestic Human Rights Agenda, a U.S. based national, international and grassroots coalition composed of over 50 organizations dedicated to the promotion and respect of human rights and the implementation of human rights obligations in U.S. domestic policy. Despite the fact that the U.S. is, in many respects, a model democratic nation – democracy is elusive to key sectors of our society – and those sectors are disproportionately minority and involve millions of people. For example: A. In certain sections of the United States, the descendants of slaves, African Americans, are routinely purged from voting rolls for specious reasons, have difficulty getting electoral districts fairly drawn and face onerous identification problems interfering with the right to vote. B. Predominately minority citizens who reside in American territories such as Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands cannot vote in presidential elections. C. In addition, the approximately 600,000 predominately African American residents of the nation’s capitol, Washington, DC (the District of Columbia) have no full voting representation in the United States Congress. D. Indigenous peoples - American Indians and language minorities, including Latinos and Asian Pacific Islanders, continue to face severe discriminatory policies and actions such as onerous identification requirements, lack of minority language assistance and lack of accessible polling places, to name a few. E. Lastly, the U.S. has incomparably harsh treatment for those who have been convicted of crimes but who have completed their prison sentences and debts to society. They are subjected to an arbitrary state-by-state system that largely works to disallow the franchise. Because criminal punishment has been meted out more harshly and more