• Growing number of black leaders embrace voter ID, reject Biden's Jim Cr

    From Ubiquitous@21:1/5 to All on Sun Apr 25 20:15:08 2021
    XPost: alt.tv.pol-incorrect, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics.elections XPost: alt.politics.usa

    Mark Robinson knows a thing or two about the political appeal of voter
    ID. After all, he became North Carolina's first ever African-American lieutenant governor last November running as a Republican who vowed to
    restore voter identification for the state's elections.

    And he won, even as the GOP's top of the ticket fell to Democratic Gov.
    Roy Cooper.

    So Robinson chafes when he hears national Democrats like Joe Biden and
    Stacey Abrams claim that asking for an ID to vote is as
    disenfranchising as the voter suppression tactics of the Jim Crow era.

    "That black people can't get an ID to vote — and quite frankly, a free
    ID, which the government has offered, to vote — is just absolute
    nonsense," Robinson told Just the News earlier this month. "And I
    reject that wholeheartedly. And I believe most of the people of North
    Carolina do as well."

    It isn't just North Carolina. Voters nationwide overwhelmingly support
    voter ID as an election integrity measure.

    A Just the News-Scott Rasmussen poll in January found a whopping 77% of Americans support mandatory voter ID, including 70% of Democrats and
    72% of African-Americans.

    Ken Blackwell, Ohio's first African-American secretary of state, said
    the news media and some corporations have wrongly twisted the narrative
    and made something that is popular in Georgia's new election integrity
    law look racist. But he predicts it will backfire.

    "You have the mainstream media, you know, initially trying to gaslight
    the American people, making those of us who see this as a very common-
    sense practical policy and procedure to be somewhat crazy or racist,
    and we're not buying it," Blackwell told Just the News.

    "And look, this is what Major League Baseball, Coca Cola and Delta need
    to understand — that the American people are not going to sit back and
    take ... the labeling of common-sense practice and ordinary hard-
    working people as being racist," he added. "Too many people have put
    too much on the line to make sure that the integrity of our election
    system is in fact protected."

    Former NFL star Burgess Owens, now a freshman congressman from Utah,
    testified last week before the Senate, fighting back against President
    Biden's claims that voter ID laws are "Jim Crow in the 21st century."

    "What I find extremely offensive is the narrative from the left that
    Black people are not smart enough, not educated enough, not desirous
    enough of education to do what every other culture and race does in
    this country: get an ID," Owens testified. "True racism is this: It's
    the projection of the Democratic Party on my proud race. It's called
    the soft bigotry of low expectations."

    After Georgia's election integrity law was first passed, Democrats led
    by the likes of Abrams blitzed the public with claims the law was
    racist. The initial blowback forced Major League Baseball to move its
    all-star game from Atlanta in protest.

    But that move has boomeranged as it became clear the decision cost $100
    million in revenues to Atlanta's mostly black business community.

    On Monday, a billboard will confront MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred with
    a demand to return the game to Atlanta and criticizing baseball's
    initial move as "all strikes & no balls."

    Meanwhile, African-American leaders who support voter ID have belatedly
    ramped up their own voices to counter the liberal criticisms and defend
    laws like Georgia's.

    Former football star Herschel Walker — viewed by some as a possible
    2022 Senate candidate in Georgia — joined the chorus, saying the focus
    should be on getting black voters ID and not on criticizing the law.

    "My grandfather today, if he was alive, would be 117 years old," Walker
    told Just the News last week. "He had a driver’s license. In today's
    world, you have to have an ID to do anything."

    One of the biggest pushbacks came last week in an op-ed published by
    Real Clear Politics in which a half dozen African-American leaders
    claimed the black community supports voter ID but the issue has been
    hijacked by white liberals.

    "The data seems clear: A majority of Black Americans support voter ID
    laws," the op-ed argued. Yet, they claim, "opportunistic activists like
    Stacey Abrams pretend the entire Black community stands behind them and
    the radical Democrat Party," crafting a narrative in which black people
    "are either opposed to voter ID or, even more offensively, that Blacks
    are incapable of obtaining IDs."

    "Elites, most of whom are white," they wrote, "have enabled them,
    taking it upon themselves to determine who the 'leaders' of the Black
    community are and ignoring anyone else who suggests differently."

    The chorus of black voices keeps growing. Vernon Jones, a former
    Democrat, is now running for Georgia governor as a Republican and
    argues the state's new voter law is essential to protect real black
    voters from having their ballots nullified by cheaters.

    Robinson, the North Carolina governor, believes the argument that
    voting comes with the responsibility to ensure all lawful-only votes
    count is beginning to win the debate.

    "I truly believe the number one thing that we need to do is to continue
    to preach the gospel that in order to secure our elections in order to
    maintain the integrity to vote, we need voter ID," he said.

    "That's number one. Number two, I believe that we need to help people
    to understand — and this is something that I have come to understand
    myself — yes, we have a right to vote, but we also have a
    responsibility to do due diligence."

    --
    Trump won.

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