Republicans’ refusal to update the Voting Rights Act and the move by red states to impose voter ID laws are signs of a GOP strategy to disenfranchise Democratic-leaning voters, a White House spokesman said on Monday.
“The amount of time and energy that Republicans have spent trying to make it more difficult for eligible voters to cast a ballot is mindboggling,” Earnest said. “I’m not really sure what they’re scared of.”
Earnest declined to comment on specific allegations that Alabama’s decision to close certain driver’s license offices was targeted at minority and poor communities, but did say Republicans have tried to block some eligible citizens from casting ballots.
“The reason we’re having this conversation is because there are legitimate concerns that have been raised about voter ID laws in the first place; and we have seen reports that many Republicans across the country acknowledge that this has a political impact that benefits Republicans,” Earnest said. “And in some cases [those actions have] a disproportionate impact on certain populations.”
“Republicans have time and again taken steps and implemented policies that make it more difficult for eligible voters to cast ballots,” Earnest said of these laws. “Yes, in some cases there is documented evidence that those were strategies that were predicated on a political benefit for Republicans, and that certainly runs counter to some of the basic and most important principles of our democracy.”
Republicans have defended voter ID laws as an effort to cut back on voter fraud, and many say it’s a way to ensure illegal immigrants aren’t allowed to vote.
But Earnest said President Obama stands by the call he made in Selma, Ala., on the 50th anniversary of the civil rights marches for Congress to develop a new pre-clearance formula for the Voting Rights Act that will pass Supreme Court scrutiny since the Supreme Court two years ago struck down the formula devised in 1965.
“The Voting Rights Act was one of the crowning achievements of our democracy, the result of Republican and Democratic efforts,” Obama said in March. “One hundred members of Congress have come here today to honor people who were willing to die for the right to protect it. If we want to honor this day, let that 100 go back to Washington and gather 400 more, and together, pledge to make it their mission to restore that law this year.”
That is part of a principle of “allowing eligible voters to cast ballots, [which] is central to our democracy,” Earnest said.
“We should be able to build bipartisan support” for measures that protect the franchise and strengthen the Voting Rights Act, Earnest said. “We hope that both Democrats and Republicans in Alabama, and every other state in the country, can live up to that principle.”
