On Monday's CNN Tonight, host Don Lemon devoted an entire seven-minute segment to letting two liberal authors accuse the Republican party of engaging in "voter suppression" similar to the Jim Crow era against minority voters.
The CNN host began the segment by recounting current complaints by Democrats that Georgia Secretary of State and GOP gubernatorial nominee Brian Kemp's office has placed 53,000 new voter registrations on hold until voters correct the application forms, incorrectly calling them "rejected absentee ballots."
Without explaining why so many of the registrations were for minority applicants, Lemon noted that "activists" complain that "the rejections disproportionately affect minority voters. The exact match standard affects around 53,000 people statewide in Georgia, and nearly 70 percent of them are African-Americans."
After bringing aboard his two guests, Lemon began by asking Emory University Professor Carol Anderson to define "voter suppression," leading her to accuse Republicans of putting up obstacles to minorities voting.
Lemon again noted that 70 percent of the registrations put on hold in Georgia were of black voters as he turned to University of Baltimore Professor F. Michael Higginbotham and asked, "Do most of these laws target minorities?"
Higginbotham charged that Republicans are "more interested in voter suppression than in voter persuasion."
Professor Anderson soon complained about President Donald Trump calling illegal immigrants "illegals," and claimed that the President and Republicans are trying to "link blackness or brownness with criminality, with stealing the election from good, honest, hard-working coded white Americans."
The CNN host brought up a Washington Post study alleging that minority turnout is hurt in states with voter ID laws, leading Professor Higginbotham to claim that voter ID requirements are "just like Jim Crow days when you had literacy tests, poll taxes, grandfather clauses -- the same impact, the same result."
Not mentioned was that voter IDs are provided for free for those who do not have drivers licenses, and provisional ballots can be used for voters who need longer to acquire the necessary ID.
