Gov. Robert Bentley (R-AL)
It shouldn't come as a surprise. It's a distressingly widespread view—and sadly, not only a Republican view—that pointing out racial impacts or even straightforward racism is the
real racism. But still.
According to Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley at an Alabama Republican Party steering committee meeting:
"Everyone can get a license and everyone can get a voter ID. They (critics) really don't have anything to talk about. It's politics at its worst. And it's race politics at its worst."
Except there are
250,000 registered voters in Alabama who don't have the picture ID they would need to vote, so the idea that "everyone can get a license and everyone can get a voter ID" apparently does not work in practice. And by the way, the total population of Alabama is
less than 5 million, so 250,000 registered voters is not an insignificant number. But never mind that, Bentley wants to be
inclusive:
"Alabama is not George Wallace's state. I don't want it to be George Wallace's state," said Bentley. "I want us to be inclusive. I don't want us to look at the color of people's skin. I don't want us to look at whether they are male or female. We are all Alabamians and I'm their governor. I know most of them (blacks in the affected counties losing driver's license offices) are not going to vote Republican. But you are not going to win people over by not being inclusive."
How about including people in proximity to driver's license offices? How about including them in voting without making them jump over a series of hurdles?
It's not "race politics at its worst" to point out that there are already a lot of people without voter ID, that voter ID laws hit some populations harder than others, and that closing driver's license offices in eight of your state's 10 counties with the highest non-white population is going to make that worse. The race politics here is the cascade of government actions making it harder for black people to vote. Every action in that cascade doesn't even have to be intentionally about race for it to have a racial impact. It's happening. We can see the impact. Denying what's going on doesn't make it less about race.
(Via TPM)