Fox News host Gretchen Carlson says she can't understand why Democrats would be against discriminatory voter ID laws unless they are "for voter fraud."
Earlier this week, the Department of Justice blocked a law requiring Texas voters to show identification on the grounds that it could disenfranchise Latino voters.
Similar Republican-backed laws have also been blocked or temporarily barred in South Carolina and Wisconsin.
On Tuesday, Attorney General Eric Holder told NBC News that the laws only hindered voters because there was "no proof that our elections are marred by in-person voter fraud."
Fox News contributor Dick Morris said Wednesday that Holder's comments just amounted to election-year politics.
"What he's trying to do, of course politically, is to send a message to downscale voters, particularly to Latinos that the Republicans are against them and he's for them," Morris asserted. "The fact is that what Texas is doing is for free issuing this ID to people. Anyone who wants it can get it. And given that, for him to say that this inhibits participation in the franchise is ludicrous."
Ignoring Holder's point about there being no widespread voter fraud, Carlson said she could not imagine why anyone would be against voter ID laws.
"I just don't understand who is for voter fraud?" she asked. "Like, who is going to stand up and say, 'Yeah, I'm for voter fraud'? All this does is try to cut down on that."
A study released last year by the Brennan Center for Justice determined that the new restrictions on who can vote -- largely championed by Republican lawmakers -- could suppress the the votes of more than five million young, minority, low-income, and disabled voters, all groups who tend to vote for Democrats.
New photo ID restrictions in Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin could disenfranchise up to 3.2 million voters, the report found. Another 2.6 million voters could be suppressed by proof of citizenship laws, laws restricting voter registration drives, election day registration restrictions, reduced early voting and restrictions on when convicted felons may have their voting rights restored.
The motivations of the Republicans introducing these restrictions haven’t exactly been a secret.
Republican House Speaker in New Hampshire, Bill O’Brien, was caught on tape explaining why he wanted to disenfranchise young voters.
“The kids [are] coming out of the school and basically doing what I did when I was a kid: voting as a liberal,” he told a tea party group last year. “You know, that’s what kids do. They don’t have life experience and they just vote their feelings.”
(H/T: Media Matters)
