Thread by @JewhadiTM

Loretta Lynch Calls Voter ID Laws Racist

The former Attorney General sings the Democratic Party's favorite song.

frontpagemag.com/fpm/271707/lor…

Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch recently asserted that Voter ID laws are “designed” to “intimidate” and “scare people away from the [political] process.”

Lynch's perspective—which represents that of the Dem Party as a whole—is founded on the premise that the incidence of voter fraud is extremely rare, and that initiatives like Voter ID requirements, in place in 34 states, are unnecessary and constitute a form of vote suppression.

A related argument holds that some demographic subgroups of the U.S. population—particularly nonwhite and low-income people—are considerably less likely to hold government-issued forms of identification than are their white, more affluent counterparts.

Thus, say the critics, Voter ID laws discriminate against these subgroups and function as a modern-day equivalent of “poll taxes” that have the effect of disenfranchising certain groups.

The notion that voter fraud is an uncommon occurrence can be traced most significantly to Citizens Without Proof, a 2006 report produced by the Soros-funded Brennan Center for Justice.

The report stated that “fraud by individual voters is both irrational [because perpetrators risk penalties of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine] and extremely rare.”

Citizens Without Proof is most often cited for its widely circulated claim that about 25% of all African-Americans of voting age do not own a photo ID.

But an August 2011 Heritage Foundation study exposed that report as being “dubious in its methodology and results, and suspect in its sweeping conclusions.”

For example, Heritage noted that the Brennan Center had: (a) used biased questioning to obtain the results it wanted vis-à-vis minority voters; (b) based its report entirely on one survey of 987 “voting age American citizens,”

But made no effort to determine whether the respondents were in fact citizens; (c) neglected to ask whether the respondents were actual voters, likely voters, registered voters, or even eligible to vote at all;

and (d) failed to ask the respondents whether they possessed student or tribal ID cards, even though such cards are acceptable forms of Voter ID in some states.

Further, Heritage pointed out that the Brennan Center statistics were sharply at odds with the findings of other studies on voter-ID documents.

For example, a 2008 American University survey in Maryland, Indiana, and Mississippi found that fewer than ONE-HALF of 1 PERCENT of registered voters lacked a government-issued ID.

Similarly, a 2006 survey of more than 36,000 voters found that only “23 people in the entire sample—less than ONE-TENTH of 1 PERCENT of reported voters—were unable to vote because of an ID requirement.”

Heritage noted, moreover, that “every state that has passed a voter ID law has also ensured that the very small percentage of individuals who do not have a photo ID can easily obtain one for free if they cannot afford one.”

Notwithstanding the flaws of the Brennan Center study, a host of leftist groups/individuals echo its assertions that voter fraud is exceedingly rare and that among voting-age adults, 25% of blacks, 16% of Hispanics, and 15% of those who earn less than $35k/yr, lack a photo ID.

In February 2016, National Review Online reported that a recent study by Reuters "found almost no difference (2% versus 3 %) in the number of white and black voters who lacked ID."