On Wednesday, a Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on H.R. 4, also known as the “John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act,” a bill leftover from the last session of Congress. Democrats hope to revive it as a backdoor way of getting what they want but haven’t been able to from the stalled so-called “For the People Act.” Republicans nicknamed that bill the “Corrupt Politicians Act” due to its sweeping nature, which would federalize elections on a massive scale.
In his opening statement, Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told the committee and the assembled panel of guests that H.R. 4 was yet “another attack on the Supreme Court” in the aftermath of their 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, which effectively stopped states from having to “preclear with the federal government election law changes based on data from 1965.” Plus, it was an attack on their ruling in the Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee case earlier this year, which found that an Arizona voting law did not violate the Voting Rights Act, nor was it enacted with the intent to discriminate against minority voters.
During his statement and in a back and forth with Biden DOJ Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, Grassley pointed out that voter ID laws, including the photo ID component, had “an overwhelming majority of Americans’ support.” He said it was something “Democrats claimed to support earlier this year” when they flip-flopped on voter ID and jumped on board Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) compromise voting rights bill, which included voter ID requirements.
Grassley quoted specific polls that showed broad support even among black and independent voters for the photo ID element. He then turned to Clarke and asked her “how do you [and via extension the DOJ] square prevailing public sentiment with your comments that voter ID is a burdensome proof of citizenship required and your words a ‘bag of tricks to suppress black votes’?”
Watch their exchange below:
The Democrat apologists at Politifact were apparently monitoring the hearing. Grassley pointing out the inconvenient facts about widespread support among differing voting blocs for photo ID voting requirements triggered them and they took to the Twitter machine to declare that the polls he correctly referenced supposedly “overlook[ed] nuances in the debate”:
Perhaps even more hilariously was that when you clicked on the link to the piece, which was written in August, you saw that after they noted that in some states, voter ID could mean something as simple as a utility bill. They begrudgingly admitted that proponents of photo ID laws for voting were correct when they talked about having board support in the polls:
• A Monmouth University poll from June 2021 found that 80% of respondents supported “requiring voters to show a photo ID in order to vote.”• A Pew Research Center poll from April 2021 found that 76% of respondents favored “requiring all voters to show government-issued photo identification to vote.”• An AP-NORC poll from March 2021 found that 72% favored “requiring all voters to provide photo identification in order to vote.”[…]In the Monmouth and Pew polls, just over 60% of Democrats backed photo ID requirements.
LOL. But yeah, the debate is “more nuanced” or something.
This is a classic example of a respected-among-Democrats fact-checking organization that is quite literally trying to gently massage an inarguably false narrative into a true one because the facts do not back up their claims:
Sadly for Politifact and Democrats alike, and to quote Ben Shapiro, those pesky little facts don’t care about your feelings.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY