(Official Washington Examiner editorial, June 23)
Let’s not sugarcoat this: For decades, Democratic politicians and their enablers in the media cartel have flat-out lied when claiming it is racist to require voters to provide proof of their identities.
A sudden about-face on the issue by Democratic leaders shows the allegation was a cynical, race-baiting falsehood all along.
The change occurred when Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia said he could support the so-called John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act if Democrats would amend it in several ways, including voter ID requirements to cast a ballot.
The bill would allow federal bureaucrats to supersede state sovereignty over election practices, thus forcing procedural changes expected to benefit Democrats.
The John Lewis Act contains numerous jokers in the deck worthy of separate analysis. Those jokers are seen as so helpful to Democrats that party leaders, knowing Manchin is a key swing vote, are happy to embrace Manchin’s voter ID demand to gain his support for the overall package. For years, Democrats found voter ID requirements an easy target for cheap charges of racism. Now that requiring voter ID helps them accomplish their larger political goals, they pretend it was never a big deal.
In 2014, then-President Barack Obama blasted voter ID laws as a serious barrier to black voters. Now, he endorses Manchin’s “compromise” measure that would include an ID requirement. What changed? Naked political calculation.
In 2018, Georgia’s wannabe governor, Stacey Abrams, said voter ID laws are intended to “scare people out of voting.” Now, she audaciously says, “No one has ever objected to having to prove who you are to vote. It’s been part of our nation’s history since the inception of voting.”
For years, then-Pastor Raphael Warnock, now a senator from Georgia, claimed ID laws were a form of “voter suppression” so “unnecessary and unjustifiable” that they amount to “dismember[ing]” Martin Luther King Jr.
Now he lies, “I have never been opposed to voter ID. And in fact, I don’t know anybody who is.”… Now that they see what Manchin sees — the public supports voter ID despite the Left’s decades of scaremongering against it — they are finally willing to jettison the claims they knew were meretricious all along. … [The full editorial is right here.]
