John Oliver: Voting

This is about one thing: suppressing the vote. In particular, it's about suppressing the minority vote and the poor vote. It's about suppressing the vote of Democratic-leaning American citizens. Period.

There are lots of bullshit comments about this video. "Everyone should have an ID." Irrelevant. "IDs are easy to get." Not everywhere. Indeed, Republican politicians are simultaneously closing offices and otherwise making it harder, not easier, for Democratic-leaning citizens to get an ID.

Are you worried about fraud? Why? For two decades, Republicans have searched desperately for evidence of in-person voting fraud, without finding any. At the same time, this solution to a nonexistent problem will likely disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of American citizens. At the very least, it will discourage voting, and our voter turnout is disgraceful, already.

Face it, no one would commit fraud this way. It would be completely asinine - not accomplishing anything, while risking jail time and fines, both. Plus, it would be very, very easy to determine if fraud had occurred, since there's a record of everyone who votes. If in-person voting fraud was a thing, it would be quite easy to demonstrate it.

No, if you really wanted to commit fraud, there are much better ways to go about it - ways that these voter-suppression laws wouldn't affect at all. Heck, at the very least, there's absentee voting. Of course, that would have no effect either, and would be equally easy to discover, but it would still be far more likely than in-person voting fraud.

No, forget all those desperate arguments, and just look at the results. Republicans know as well as anyone that in-person voter fraud is a nonexistent problem, but that these laws have the potential to hugely impact voter turnout among Democrats - not everywhere, but in many states. That's why they do it.

This isn't about voter fraud. It's an attempt to keep some Democrats from voting. Period.