Who’s Disenfranchising Whom?
There are some things that I honestly think I will never understand, the Dr. Phil Show, people who like brussel sprouts and how investigating possible voter registration fraud is the equivalent of racially based disenfranchisement.
As you may have heard Indiana State Police is investigating the possibility that thousands of recent voter registrations may have been forged or fraudulently altered. The group at the center of the investigation is the Indiana Voter Project (IVP), an arm of Patriot Majority USA, a super PAC that reportedly has ties to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.
Earlier this summer word started to creep out that thousands of voter registration forms had been altered across Indiana. Word got to the Secretary of State from County Clerks and Connie Lawson referred the matter to State Police. A raid was launched and the matter is under review. IVP accused State Police of Gestapo like tactics and said the state, under the direction of Mike Pence, was trying to disenfranchise African-American voters.
If I may be so bold as to use a term that is not uncommon in the African-American community, “Negro Please!!!”
First of all, nowhere on the State of Indiana Voter Registration form does it ask for your race. It asks for gender, but not race. So how could the state disenfranchise black voters if the form doesn’t ask if you’re black? I asked IVP that question and have yet to get an answer. Last week the group to the Associated Press it reached that conclusion based on the fact they had registered predominantly black voters. But once again, how would law enforcement know that unless they’re told? I guess you could try and do this by the names, but it might be difficult to tell if Jonathan Wallace or Jacqueline Price were black or white people as opposed to Leroy Washington or Raineesha Williams.
Secondly, if anyone has been disenfranchised it’s the person whose voter registration was changed and they now have to cast a provisional ballot and go jump through hoops in order to exercise their constitutional rights because of either malfeasance or misfeasance. And to make matters more interesting, while Voter ID can help prevent most fraud, ID is not needed if someone is going to vote absentee and a fraudulent registration can lead to a fraudulent ballot being cast. And while this could all be a giant exercise in incompetence, my spidey-sense tells me there’s something more here.
No matter how you slice, if the folks at the IVP want to blame someone for being disenfranchised instead of pointing the finger at Mike Pence, Connie Lawson or State Police Chief Doug Carter and Indiana State Police, I suggest they get a mirror and find out who the true culprits are.
