GOP rep Mike Turzai's gaffe reveals real goal of voter ID laws: Voter suppression
OPINION - The Republican strategy for winning the youth vote, black vote, and low-income vote has been to ensure that no one belonging to any of those three groups is able to vote
The Republican strategy for winning the youth vote, black vote, and low-income vote has been to ensure that no one belonging to any of those three groups is able to vote. The GOP has aggressively pursued some of the most stringent voter ID laws, and since 2010, 16 states have enacted the most restrictive barriers to voting since poll taxes and literacy tests.
With the exception of one state, all of these laws have been voted on party lines, with Republican officials voting in favor. Up until now, the party line has been they are “protecting the integrity of the vote” by protecting the American public from the nonexistent issue of voter fraud. In reality, all they have done is made it harder for those constituencies (youth, blacks, low-income) who do not traditionally lean Republican to get into the voting booth. Yet, they’ve done an amazing job of sticking to their “protect the vote” message and getting the American people to buy that line of bull.
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However, Pennsylvania state House Republican Mike Turzai recently let it slip. In his remarks to the Republican State Committee over the weekend, the state representative listed the achievements of he and his colleagues and got a bit careless. Turzai said, “Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it’s done. First pro-life legislation – abortion facility regulations — in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.”
Journalist Michael Kinsley once described a gaffe as when a politician tells the truth, and Turzai just committed a gaffe that will likely garner little public attention but reveals the true motives of the GOP efforts to curb voter fraud.
