How Democrats Work To Restrict Voting and Disenfranchise People in a Purple State

Justin Riemer, the former Deputy Director of Elections in the swing state of Virginia and editor/co-author of RNLA’s recent response to the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, does not think about elections in a “partisan” fashion  after his former job helping to run elections in Virginia.  What the left does not understand, Justin is a typical Republican fighting to making it easier to vote and harder to cheat. 

Unfortunately Democrats do not agree and spend their time defending groups like ACORN and its successors while making false cries of “voter suppression.”  The reality is they are the ones who are making it harder to vote.  As Justin points out in an Op-Ed in the Richmond Time’s Dispatch, in Virginia it was Republicans who are trying to improve voting:

While Democrats accuse Republicans of making voting harder, the truth is Virginia Republicans have been leading the charge to improve our elections. It was a Republican, Del. David Ramadan, who led efforts to enact online voter registration and pass legislation to modernize voter registration at the Department of Motor Vehicles, two [Presidential] commission recommendations. In addition, the majority-Republican State Board of Elections has worked in a bipartisan manner to improve voting for Virginia’s overseas and military citizens and to participate in programs like the Electronic Registration Information Center to reach thousands of unregistered but eligible citizens, two more commission recommendations.

It is ironic that last week President Obama was talking about voting but not his own commission’s recommendations.  How often does a President announce a commission during the State of the Union, yet not talk about its findings in his speeches on the topic?  The fact is Democrats led by the President do NOT want to fix voting, they see the voting process as a political issue to exploit.  Justin also points out a prime example in Virginia.

Readers might remember last year when the Democratic Party of Virginia [DPVA] sued the State Board of Elections to stop the removal of thousands of registrations of individuals who moved out of Virginia and registered to vote in another state. The suit targeted Crosscheck, an interstate data-sharing program DPVA vilified as “purportedly designed to prevent voting fraud but that (has) the effect of suppressing voter turnout among the poor, the elderly and minorities — many of whom are Democratic.” The judge quickly dismissed the suit, writing the DPVA had not “presented any evidence” that Crosscheck would disenfranchise voters.

Fast-forward to January when President Barack Obama’s bipartisan commission organized to make recommendations to improve voting released its report. With a few exceptions, the commission made good suggestions, including a call for states to join interstate data-sharing programs to clean up their voter rolls. The commission specifically endorsed Crosscheck, the same program DPVA attacked as a plot to keep Democrats from voting.

If Democrats really care about “voter suppression” and “restrictions on voters,” they will work with Republicans to fix the process.  However, their actions show little interest in doing more than being hypocrites on programs like Crosscheck. 

For more solutions, read Justin’s entire article here.