The government faces being hauled before the European court of human rights http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/european-court-of-human-rights it gives prisoners the right to vote as a matter of urgency.

Voting rights have been restored for two American Indians in South Dakota who sued after being wrongly turned away at their polling places in the 2008 general elections because they were convicted felons, the American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday.

The agreement on behalf of Pine Ridge Reservation residents Kim Colhoff and Eileen Janis was reached Monday with the state and Shannon County.

While state law bans voting by anyone sentenced to prison, the disenfranchisement was improperly applied to Colhoff and Janis, who were only sentenced to probation.

Seven members of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) observed pre-electoral and election-day conditions during the Philippines’ historic election last week and found widespread irregularities, a high potential for fraud, voter machine breakdowns, military intimidation and a deadly gun battle inside the poll. NLG observers joined over 80 other observers from 12 different countries as members of the People International Observer Mission.

A few weeks ago I met Riki Ott at the Move to Amend/Campaign to Legalize Democracy national gathering in Denver. We were among two dozen people who came together to begin to develop plans to end corporate rule and abolish corporate personhood.

ON FEBRUARY 16, ABOUT 200 people gathered on the steps of the Wisconsin state capitol. “It’s fitting that we stand out in the cold,” said Mike McCabe, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

“That’s where the Supreme Court has left us.”

As many writers and activists have declared for some time now, Canadians -- and citizens in all English-speaking developed countries -- are facing a crisis in democracy. Another way of putting it is that we face a democratic deficit. That term harkens back to a book written 35 years ago called the Crisis in Democracy, commissioned by the Trilateral Commission (TLC), an international neo-liberal forum of CEOs, former and current heads of state and free market academics. The crisis they were talking about was different.

The newspaper industry is struggling. According to a March 2010 report from the Pew Research Center’s annual Project for Excellence in Journalism, the American newspaper industry has lost $1.6 billion in annual reporting and editing capacity since 2000. In the last three years, the newspaper industry has cut thousands of full-time reporting and editing jobs.

Alaska-Colorado-California-Oregon-Washington -- Three-plus weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court threw out limits on corporate spending in political campaigns in Citizens United v. FEC, an ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 80% of Americans oppose the Court's ruling, including 65% who "strongly" oppose it. A whopping 72% want legislative action to overrule the Court and reinstate the campaign limits.