IN THE PAPERS - Wednesday, June 10: We look at the chaos surrounding primary elections in the US state of Georgia on Tuesday, which many papers warn is a sign of what's to come in November's presidential election. Also, George Floyd has been laid to rest in Houston and a woman has successfully campaigned to change the Merriam-Webster's dictionary definition of racism.
With long lines and broken machines, the Democratic and Republican primary votes held in the US state of Georgia on Tuesday were marred by problems. The website Politico reports that some voters waited six hours to cast their vote, while others simply gave up trying. As one person is cited as saying, the primaries were a "hot, flaming mess" and some voters noted that the voting issues occurred in predominantly African American areas. For the Washington Post, the chaotic primaries are a "microcosm" of what's to come in November's presidential election all over the country. Some problems might be due to intentional voter suppression, a shortage of poll workers because of coronavirus restrictions, technology failures, or blunders in postal votes. For the Post, the US could face an election disaster come November.
Meanwhile, George Floyd was laid to rest in Houston on Tuesday, something that's making the front pages here in France. Thousands of people turned up from all over the US to pay their respects, with one man conceding that Floyd's death is a pain that will be difficult to heal, Libération says. The communist paper L’Humanité, meanwhile, says Floyd's death marks the end of a history and the beginning of the fight against racism and police brutality.
Let’s end on that word, racism. A college graduate from Missouri has managed to force Merriam-Webster's dictionary to change its definition of racism which she saw as too simplistic. Kennedy Mitchum says she got into arguments with people who used the dictionary definition of disliking people based on race. So she emailed the editors and the dictionary definition has now been updated to include the systems of oppression that accompany racism. You can read all about it in The New York Times.
