Rep. Burgess Owens slammed an opponent of voter ID laws and suggested that those who oppose showing an ID to vote are racist.
“You know what’s racist? Assuming because I’m black that ‘I just don’t have the capability of getting an I-D,’” the Utah Republican and former Super Bowl champion football player tweeted Thursday. “Disclaimer: We are capable of getting and I-D (and even using the internet!)”
You know what’s racist? Assuming because I’m black that “I just don’t have the capability of getting an I-D.”
Disclaimer: We are capable of getting and I-D (and even using the internet!) https://t.co/WpF2zQ4KYX
— Burgess Owens (@BurgessOwens) March 11, 2021
HR 1 WOULD PUT THE WASHINGTON SWAMP IN CHARGE OF ELECTIONS
“I use my I.D. to drive a car, to get a job, to board a plane, pick up prescriptions, and virtually everything else in life,” Owens said in another tweet. “So tell me again, why is showing an I.D. ‘voter suppression’?”
I use my I.D. to drive a car, to get a job, to board a plane, pick up prescriptions, and virtually everything else in life…
So tell me again, why is showing an I.D. “voter suppression”?
— Burgess Owens (@BurgessOwens) March 11, 2021
Owens has been a vocal opponent of the massive voting rights bill, known as HR 1 or the “For the People Act,” that is being debated in Congress.
“H.R. 1 has nothing to do with the people and nothing to do with fortifying our country’s election system,” Owens said in a statement last week. “Taxpayer-funded political campaigns, nullified voter I.D. laws, and nationalized elections are not a successful recipe for restoring faith in our democracy or protecting the voice of American voters. Not to mention, the proposed changes would drastically re-engineer our federal form of government by centralizing power in Washington. Our elections should be free and fair, not bureaucratized power grabs that benefit only the Democratic majority.”
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The bill has earned stiff opposition from most Republicans, including Owens’s Utah Republican colleague Sen. Mike Lee, who said that the bill was “written in hell by the devil himself.”
Democrats insist that the legislation will improve access to voting by removing barriers to registration and voter ID laws that they have long decried as racist.
“This is a landmark piece of legislation that is urgently needed,” President Biden said Sunday. “I hope the Senate does its work so I can sign it into law.”
