Lying liars and the lies they tell
It was just a few years ago when my home state of Georgia stirred up the proverbial hornet’s nest by passing a new election integrity law. It wasn’t anything major and still allowed people to cast absentee ballots, vote early, and vote on election day just as they always had.
But the media lost its mind. They broadcast now twice-failed gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams to tell the world how this was really a voter suppression bill. Major League Baseball pulled the All-Star Game from Atlanta, which hurt the city and the state economically, and we kept hearing how it was terrible.
And then the next election cycle came around. The vote was so suppressed that there was a record turnout.
We were told that this wasn’t really evidence voters suppression wasn’t happening, though no one could really explain how voter suppression lead to more people voting—if it was actually a suppression effort, it kind of sucked—but we were assured that it really was.
Now, the law has been on the books for two election cycles, and while it’s too early to actually know what will happen on election day itself—I’m writing this when the polls are still wide open but most people are still at work—it’s pretty clear that those pushing the voter suppression line are just liars.
In a new report obtained by The Federalist, the Honest Elections Project (HEP) demonstrates how voter data from recent elections in Texas and Georgia disproves the left’s phony narrative that requiring eligible electors to provide ID when voting by mail “suppresses” their ability to participate in the electoral process.
“As the use of VBM [vote by mail] increases, efficient and effective voter verification practices are essential for bolstering public trust,” the analysis reads. “Voter ID for mail ballots is a commonsense reform that enjoys the support of most voters. Unfortunately, given the opposition to voter ID requirements generally, resistance against voter ID for mail ballots is unsurprising.”
The report specifically highlights a 2021 law passed by Texas Republicans that, among other changes, implemented identification requirements for electors voting by mail. To determine the potential effects of this policy on the electorate, HEP examined the state’s VBM ballot rejection rate for statewide races throughout 2022.
The study found that while Texas “initially experienced a notable spike in VBM rejections compared with the statewide VBM rejection rate of 1.76% in the November 2018 midterm election,” the statewide VBM rejection rate for every race thereafter “declined.” By the 2022 midterms, the report noted, “Texas’ rejection rate had fallen back in line with historic rejection rates.”
“The spike in rejection rates following the implementation of the ID requirements ultimately returned to levels consistent with historical standards by the November 2022 midterm election,” the analysis reads.
HEP inspected the initial spike of VBM rejections and what factors could have contributed to it. Among the most notable and probable causes cited by the group are the actions of Texas Democrats that delayed the passage and implementation of the new changes before the 2022 elections.
Of course, Democrats continue to call these voter suppression efforts, despite the ample evidence that if they are, they don’t work.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m sympathetic to people who want to make sure everyone who is eligible to vote has the opportunity to cast their ballot. I don’t mind anyone asking questions about what resources rural voters have available when it comes to meeting these requirements.
However, I assure you, rural voters have had to make things like photocopies before. The county library usually has a copier. So does the church. Hell, I’ve seen them in grocery stores, for crying out loud.
There are options and folks in rural areas know all of them because they’ve encountered the need to make photocopies before.
Asking isn’t the problem. It’s the constant belief that rural folks are too stupid to figure out how to meet the requirements in question.
They’re not. They know the difficulties and deal with them all the time.
But people like Kamala Harris and Stacey Abrams, as well as thousands of others who you’ve never heard of like to pretend they don’t and you’re vile for not accepting their ability to get IDs and make copies is exactly as it is in their own heads and not as it is for the reality for the people they’re supposedly looking out for.
If we assume that’s what it’s really about.
See, asking about how to deal with this situation can be an expression of concern. Trying to ignore reality in order to make fraud easier is a different matter entirely.
For all their claims that fraud never happens, they seem bound and determined to undermine literally any election integrity effort, even to the point of trying to claim record turnouts don’t undermine their claims of voter suppression. If Georgia and Texas are trying to suppress the vote, they kind of suck at it.
Like it or not, a lot of people aren’t exactly trusting of the democratic process these days. They don’t trust that fraud isn’t happening, especially when we’ve seen too many blatant examples of it. If we’ve seen these, how many did we not see?
Because it happens, let’s beef up the effort to keep our elections secure. Let’s take the necessary steps to keep fraud to an absolute minimum.
They know that the reality is that rural folks are voting just fine. They know these laws aren’t suppressing anyone who is eligible to vote. They know all of this.
They just want you to believe that it does so you’ll oppose these laws going forward.
That’s a lie, and it’s disgusting.
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