Are voting restrictions about voter fraud, or are they just a ruse to suppress likely Democratic voters?
Since 2010, conservatives have instituted voting restrictions in 21 states, the most well-known of which are laws that require photo IDs at the polls.
The proponents of these laws insist that they’re not trying to keep poor minorities from voting — they’re preventing election fraud.
But last week, the truth slipped out. On a St. Louis radio show, former South Carolina senator and current president of the Heritage Foundation, Jim DeMint, admitted that the voter ID laws are really just about getting Republicans elected, reports MSNBC.
The Republican senator-turned-activist initially complained during the radio interview about Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) restoring the voting rights of former felons, before insisting that Democrats are trying to have “illegals” vote for them.
But DeMint then turned to voter-ID laws. “[I]t’s something we’re working on all over the country because in the states where they do have voter ID laws you’ve seen, actually, elections begin to change towards more conservative candidates,” he said.
…And if DeMint’s misstep sounds familiar, there’s a good reason. Earlier this month, Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.), a far-right freshman congressman, admitted in a television interview that voter-ID laws will “make a little bit of a difference” in boosting Republicans in the 2016 elections.
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