Republicans are still trying to stifle democracy
by David Atkins
Lee Fang at The Nation reports:
This morning, ProgressNow New Mexico, a left-leaning advocacy organization, released a video showing the New Mexico Republican Party instructing its poll watchers to engage in what could be illegal voter suppression.
The poll watchers are told to request identification from voters, even though the law in New Mexico does not require voter ID. There are other troubling parts of the video and poll watcher instruction manual, including a call for poll watchers to instruct some voters to vote by provisional ballot even if they are registered correctly in their precinct. Poll watchers are told to deceive Spanish-speaking voters by telling them ballots that interpreters are not available, when in fact New Mexico law provides for language assistance for minorities and Spanish-language ballots.
At CPAC Colorado, a conservative conference today in Denver, I asked Congressman Steve Pearce, a Republican lawmaker who represents New Mexico, about the brewing controversy. Pearce appeared to be aware of the NM GOP’s poll watching efforts, and supported them.
“We’re simply saying that we’re going to start, we’re going to take it back it into our hands,” said Pearce. “We should check for ID since you have to show an ID to do anything in America.”
He did, however, admit that doing so would be against the law. “It’s against New Mexico law to check for ID,” the congressman conceded.
Yes, it is. And state supreme courts are blocking efforts to prevent early voting.
Here’s the video in question.
These people just hate the democratic process.
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