(Sept. 16) Vice President Kamala Harris apparently wants to make it easier for dead people to vote. Her positions on voting rules are both shameful and dishonest.
Harris’s deceit was highlighted on Sept. 15 in a well-aimed tweet by Edward Mueller, policy manager for the Utah House Republican caucus. Earlier that day, Harris had tweeted, “This year alone, 18 states have passed 30 anti-voter laws. These laws disproportionately impact communities of color – and are designed to make it harder for people to vote….” Her claims are bunk.
Mueller noted that Utah is one of the 18 states to which Harris referred. And for what? For “a completely bipartisan bill (73-0) which simply allows county clerks to remove verified deceased voters from the vote rolls. Labeling us ‘anti-voter’ is nothing but cynical politicking.”
“Cynical” is putting it too kindly. What Harris and the entire national Democratic leadership are doing with regard to voting rules is pernicious, malicious, and borderline vicious.
It should be obvious that the simple act of excising the names of the dead from voter lists is not a plot against people of color and not designed to make it harder for actual people to vote. Indeed, failing to do so would be a sign of massive incompetence and an open invitation to fraud.
Removing the names of the dead from voter rolls is not voter suppression. Ensuring that people are registered at their current address is not voter suppression. Requiring identification to vote is not voter suppression. It is not voter suppression to decline to expand the times and places of voting beyond what has served well for decades and beyond adequate resources to ensure ballot integrity.
It is not racist to do what the vast majority of states do, namely to outlaw “vote harvesting” by which paid third parties “gather” massive numbers of absentee votes and “deliver” them to voting officials. It is not a plot against black people to hold election officials accountable when their inefficiencies cause voting-line waits to be too long…. [The full column is here.]
