1. Beyond Voting
   Resource Type: Article
   First Published: 2000   Published: 2016
   By all means vote if you feel like it. But don't stop there. Real social change requires participation, not representation.
   
2. Bowling Alone
   The Collapse and Revival of American Community
   Resource Type: Book
   First Published: 2000
   Bowling Alone documents the rise and fall of community activity in the twentieth century in the United States and the social changes this reflects. It offers all the evidence, the confirmatory and the contradictory, to give a complete look at trends of community involvement and how increased social capital can benefit everybody.
3. Canada's prime minister wants to make it harder for people to vote against him
   Resource Type: Article
   First Published: 2015
   Stephen Harper, who won by an uncomfortably small margin in the last election, has passed laws designed to keep voters who oppose him from the polls.
4. Changes to voting system leave Canada worse off
   Resource Type: Article
   First Published: 2015
   How did we end up with this convoluted and discriminatory method of voting when we once had perhaps the best method in the world - door-to-door enumeration and no hard-to-get voter ID requirement?
5. Critique of Nonviolent Politics 
   From Mahatma Gandhi to the Anti-Nuclear Movement
   Resource Type: Book
   First Published: 1984   Published: 2002
   Ryan accepts that sometimes nonviolence can be effective, but says that sometimes it is not: "a principled insistence on nonviolence can in some circumstances be dangerous to progressive social movements." He says that nonviolence theory "is troubled by moral dogma and mechanical logic."
6. Democracy for the Few 
   Resource Type: Book
   First Published: 1988   Published: 1995
   How does the U.S. political system work and for what purpose? What are the major forces shaping political life and how do they operate? Who governs in the United States? Who gets what, when, how, and why? Who pays and in what ways. These are the central questions investigated in this book.
   
7. Double Standards
   Resource Type: Website
   Focusing on double standards in the media and in international politics. "Double Standard 1. a rule or principle applied more strictly to some people more than others (or oneself)."
8. Electoral reform will give us a voice
   Resource Type: Article
   First Published: 1998
   The democratic case for electoral reform is fundamental, and to attack it
   as somehow a 'right wing' issue is a betrayal of the radical democratic tradition.
9. Fair Vote Canada - Home
   Resource Type: Website
   A multi-partisan citizens' campaign for voting system reform. Canadians from all points on the political spectrum, all regions and all walks of life are joining FVC to demand a fair voting system - a fundamental requirement for healthy representative democracy and government accountability.
10. The Fight for Freedom for Women
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1973
    The fight for women's rights in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, primarily focusing on Britain and the USA.
11. GOP Creates Perverse Online Voter Registration, Making It Harder for People to Vote
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2015
    The bill will ultimately reduce voting by senior citizens, people with disabilities and minorities.
12. The Great Strike at UNAM
    Against The Current vol. 88
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2000
    The Great Strike of the Mexican National Autonomous University (UNAM), which for more than nine months was occupied by students organized in the Strike General Committee (CGH), started on April 20, 1999 and lasted until February 6, 2000. On that date 2500 federal police, following orders given by President Zedillo, evicted hundreds of students from the campus and arrested them.
13. Halle/Chomsky: An Eight Point Brief for LEV (Lesser Evil Voting)
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2016
    Among the elements of the weak form of democracy enshrined in the constitution, presidential elections continue to pose a dilemma for the left in that any form of participation or non participation appears to impose a significant cost on our capacity to develop a serious opposition to the corporate agenda served by establishment politicians. The position outlined below is that which many regard as the most effective response to this quadrennial Hobson's choice, namely the so-called "lesser evil" voting strategy or LEV. Simply put, LEV involves, where you can, i.e. in safe states, voting for the losing third party candidate you prefer, or not voting at all. In competitive "swing" states, where you must, one votes for the "lesser evil" Democrat.
14. The History of Democracy 
    A Marxist Interpretation
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2013
    Roper traces the history of democracy from ancient Athens to the emergence of liberal representative and socialist participatory democracy. He argues that democracy cannot be understood separately from the social and economic contexts in which democratic states operate.
15. How to Rig an Election
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2012
    Election fraud in the United States in the era of computerized voting machines controlled and programmed by far-right corporate executives.
16. Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution 
    Volume I: State and Bureaucracy
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1977
    A wide-ranging and thorough exposition of Marx's views on democracy.
17. Letter to a Progressive Democrat
    Against The Current vol. 110
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2004
    Dear Progressive Democrat: I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 and I'm proud of it. You voted for Nader and you regret it (or, you voted for Gore, even though you liked Nader better).
18. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - October 8, 2015
    Elections
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 2015
    Elections are the topic of the week, with items related to the October 19 Canadian federal election, and also to broader issues of parliamentary democracy, voting and whether voting can bring about change, and the neo-liberal attack on democracy. Articles look at the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, the financial takeovers of Ukraine and Greece, and debt bondage. Also: a discussion of James Hansen's fossil fuel exit strategy, and a critique of Alinsky-style organizing.
19. Parliamentary Names & Numbers Online
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    Lists all federal Members of Parliament and Senators, all provincial legislators, federal ministries, federal agencies and Crown corporations, Canadian embassies abroad, provincial and territorial ministries, direct phone and fax numbers, E-mail addresses, World Wide Web addresses, all indexed by subject. Available in print and online at $75/year.
20. Passionate Declarations
    Essays on War and Justice
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1990   Published: 2003
    Essays looking at American political ideology.
21. The Policy of Abstention
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1887
    Morris argues that socialism should be fought for using mass action rather than parliamentary action.
    
22. Rosa Luxemburg 
    Selected Political Writings
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1972
    A selection of Rosa Luxemburg's writings which highlight her outstanding contributions to the theory and practice of revolutionary socialism.
23. Strong voter registration campaign could mean the end for Harper
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2015
    The primary objective of Stephen Harper's absurdly-named Fair Elections Act is to prevent hundreds-of-thousands of Canadians from voting for the NDP, Liberals, Greens, etc. But efforts to help people to register to vote are not as strong as they could be. There needs to be close co-operation among groups to make sure that as many people as possible - particularly people in some 70 ridings where the Conservatives are vulnerable - have the identification they need to vote.
24. Suffrage (Voting Rights)
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    The civil right to vote, or the exercise of that right.
25. Thieving Sons of Bushes
    Against The Current vol. 91
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2001
    “Never Trust a Son of Bush” was one of many signs at George W. Bush's presidential inauguration in Washington, D.C. on January 20. Some 25,000 marched in Washington and 15,000 rallied in San Francisco. The D.C. protest was the largest one at a presidential inauguration since 1973 -- at President Nixon's second term.
26. To My Less-Evilism Haters: A Rejoinder to Halle and Chomsky
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2016
    John Halle has taken to calling my CounterPunch article, No Lesser Evil, Not This Time, "idiotic" and part of the "lunatic and sociopathic left". These pathetic and childlike insults are part of a left that spends more time giving itself a thousand cuts than one good jab at the common enemy. I was even more hurt to read that Chomsky, quoted by Halle, thinks my article represents "left…self-destruction" that is "adding new dimensions" through "contemporary irrationality and refusal to think".
27. Voting Under Socialism
    It'll be more meaningful - but hopefully won't involve endless meetings.
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2016
    
28. What Went Wrong in Ohio
    The Conyers Report on the 2004 Presidential Election
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2006
    Documents fraud in the 2004 U.S. election.
29. Who the Hell is Supporting Donald Trump?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2016
    Somehow the Trump shell game has gained followers. So the question is now, who the hell are these people voting for Trump?
30. Why aren't people voting?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2011
    There is much ado about "voter apathy", with a focus on young people, who in creative and desperate ways are urged and "mobbed" to vote. Unfortunately, much of this effort is barking up the wrong tree: unless we can guarantee that hundreds of thousands of Canadians who are eager to vote can actually do so, we are subjecting them to a nasty piece of Catch 22 where the victims of voter obstruction get the blame for being apathetic and not doing their civic duty.
31. Women's Suffrage (Canada)
    Connexipedia: Article in the Canadian Encyclopedia
    Resource Type: Article
    Suffrage campaign in the late 19th century which aimed to achieve votes for all women as a democratic right.

Experts on Scrutin in the Sources Directory

1. Fair Vote Canada