North Carolina Passes Laws Restricting Voting

Image from source, CBSNews

I'm getting to the point where I'm having trouble figuring out conservatives. Well, it's always been difficult, but I'm beginning to think that the elected officials and behind-the-scenes conservatives are working from a whole different playbook from the rabble. And their media lapdogs? I'd always assumed that they were in on the real story, while passing on talking points to the sheeple.

But how to parse this one? North Carolina has passed a whole bunch of restrictions on voting rights, from Voter ID to limiting early voting, to limiting what students can vote, and other measures. I watched All In With Chris Hayes, who had invited a Republican woman from North Carolina. Chris interviewed her, trying to pry out the reasoning behind the laws. All he got were the standard "protecting the sanctity of the vote" and anti-voter fraud answers. Was she feeding him what she wanted him to hear, or did she really have no other answers?

Steve Deace, an Iowa conservative (and how) talk show host posted on Facebook that he was truly baffled how anybody could be against Voter ID, since you need ID to rent a video at Blockbuster (how quaint). Is Deace really clueless as to the whole raft of other voting restrictions that came along with Voter ID? Has he really never heard why liberals are against these sorts of laws? Does he really believe that voter fraud is rampant in America?

Listen, folks, I know that the arguments for having ID to vote sound really, really good. You do need ID for all sorts of things less important than voting. But the fact remains--though it's hard to personally imagine--that tens and hundreds of thousands of voters don't have the ID. Some have been voting without it for their whole lives, going back to the fifties or earlier. In many cases, these people live in areas where the locations and times for acquiring legal ID is restrictive, sometimes purposefully so. You know how they pass tough restrictions on abortion clinics, like the width of hallways, or admitting rights at a hospital, and then they pass a law that hospitals can't grant admitting rights? It's often like that, a catch-22.

It is also true that voter fraud is vanishingly rare. The motives for passing Voter ID laws is not voter fraud. The proof is in the admissions of several conservatives saying things like "Voter ID is going to win for us in Pennsylvania," and in the fact that so many other restrictions are passed along with them.

If you honestly think that wiping out voter fraud is the primary reason for Republicans passing all of these laws, you have got to be hopelessly naïve.

[Excerpt]

N.C. sued soon after voter ID bill signed into law

North Carolina Gov. Patrick McCrory has signed a sweeping voting reform bill that imposes strict photo identification requirements on the state's 4.5 million voters, rolls back the early voting period and repeals one-stop registration during early voting.

Almost immediately following the signing, civil rights groups filed lawsuits in federal court challenging the law. . .

Read more at: CBS News