A frequent whiner when it comes to Republicans and voter ID laws, MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews couldn’t help but briefly commiserate with his guests following the first 2016 GOP presidential debate that the “denial of voting rights” and other issues like “childhood development” that “parents, especially mothers care about” were not discussed in the debate.
Voter ID
By Connor Williams | July 9, 2014 | 10:59 AM EDT
Leave it to MSNBC to twist the rhetoric of the Tea Party following Thad Cochran’s upset of Chris McDaniel in the June 24 Mississippi runoff. On Tuesday's Now, host Alex Wagner and David Corn of Mother Jones both strongly suggested that racism is the reason why the Tea Party objected to thousands of Democrats pushing Cochran to victory.
Wagner sneered, “This is particularly pointed for the Republican Party, not just because it's Republican versus Republican but the votes they are questioning are predominantly black votes.” She then took things up a notch, claiming that the Tea Party views black voters as illegitimate: [MP3 audio here; video below]
By P.J. Gladnick | July 5, 2014 | 10:58 AM EDT
Voter fraud is so rare “you’re more likely to get hit by lightning than find a case of prosecutorial voter fraud,” according to Judith Browne-Dianis, co-director of the liberal Advancement Project.
Apparently lightning has struck very hard in a local primary election according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune whose only real reference to voter fraud in the past two years was to reprint a St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial mocking the possibility of its existence as "GOP voter suppression efforts." What has made the Star Tribune suddenly discover the (GASP!) existence of voter fraud is that it was allegedly perpetrated by one Democrat candidate against another Democrat in a primary. Here is the Star Tribune finally acknowledging the existence of this "rare" crime but only because it involves Democrat vs Democrat:
MSNBC Again Misleads on Voter ID Laws by Insisting It's Anti-Obama Phenomenon; Ten States Passed Laws Prior to 2010 Elections
By Ken Shepherd | August 27, 2012 | 6:06 PM EDT Appearing on a Now with Alex Wagner segment on voter ID laws today, The Nation magazine's Ari Berman insisted that the push for voter ID laws has been an incredibly recent phenomenon that is most certainly an anti-Obama, anti-Democrat push.
The problem, of course, is that it's simply not true, especially since a baker's dozen of states passed new ID laws prior to the rise of the Tea Party Republicans in state legislatures in the 2010 elections