On September 17, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania began printing ballots for November’s election after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court made its final decisions regarding ballot access. In southeastern Pennsylvania alone, over 600,000 voters had already requested mail-in ballots. Members of the major parties awaited the chance to cast their vote for the presidential ticket of their choice. However, not all the presidential tickets were actually represented on the ballot; the Green Party’s candidates for president and vice president had been struck from the ballot over a filing error in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court case In Re: Nomination Paper of Scroggin. An examination of this case and the court that decided it reveals that partisan ballot decisions like In Re: Scroggin undermine democratic principles and subvert evenhanded justice while enabling the duopoly of the major parties.
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Four years ago, in an ostensibly more inclusive climate, students at CUNY Guttman College reexamined New York gallery diversity. They found that white people, who account for just 64 percent of the population, netted 80 percent of the gallery representation in the city. The statistics suggest that the exclusionary culture Pindell identified decades ago persists into the present. In fact, it appears that today’s art market not only excludes but also exploits artists of color; Pindell’s own experience illustrates this dynamic.
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