Voting rights of minorities in U.S. suppressed: China report

The voting rights in the United States are restricted by economic income, race and other factors, says "Human Rights Record of the United States in 2014" released Friday by the Information Office of the State Council.

Preliminary exit polls showed that voters of African origins accounted for 12 percent in the 2014 midterm election, down from 13 percent in the 2012 presidential election. Hispanic voters dropped from 10 percent in 2012 to 8 percent and the proportion of Asian voters also reduced to two percent from three percent, the report says, citing data at usatoday.com.

In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Texas could use its controversial new voter identification law for the November election. Roughly 600,000 voters, many of them black or Latino, could be turned away at the polls because they lacked acceptable identification, according to the report.

In addition, criminal disenfranchisement removed massive swaths of society from the democratic process as a collateral consequence of conviction, it notes.

A striking 5.85 million Americans could not vote because of a criminal conviction before. Many disenfranchised citizens lived in Iowa, Kentucky, or Florida -- the three states with extreme policies of disenfranchising anyone with a felony conviction for life, according to a story on www.aclu.org.

In contrast to high costs, general election voter turnout for the 2014 midterms was the lowest in any election cycle since the World War II. As of November 3, 2014, only 36.4 percent of the voting-eligible population cast ballots. Indiana had the lowest turnout rate, with just 28 percent of eligible voters participating, the report cites a story from The Washington Post as saying. Endi