So Glad Someone at the New York Times

Takes the trouble to watch two-year-old reruns of "The Newsroom".

The New York Times from yesterday:

The Big Lie Behind Voter ID Laws

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

OCT. 12, 2014

...

Similar laws have been aggressively pushed in many states by Republican lawmakers who say they are preventing voter fraud, promoting electoral “integrity” and increasing voter turnout. None of that is true. There is virtually no in-person voter fraud; the purpose of these laws is to suppress voting.

In Texas, where last week a federal judge struck down what she called the most restrictive voter ID law in the country, there were two convictions for in-person voter impersonation in one 10-year period. During that time, 20 million votes were cast. Nor is there any evidence that these laws encourage more voters to come to the polls. Instead, in at least two states — Kansas and Tennessee — they appear to have reduced turnout by 2 percent to 3 percent, according to a report released last week by the Government Accountability Office.

Voter ID laws, as their supporters know, do only one thing very well: They keep otherwise eligible voters away from the polls. In most cases, this means voters who are poor, often minorities, and who don’t have the necessary documents or the money or time to get photo IDs.

...

All of which should come as a surprise to exactly no one who reads anything other that the Wall Street Journal, listens to anything other than Hate Radio, gets their "news" from anyplace other than Fox, or watched "The Newsroom" back in 2012 (video embedding disabled),

I will say, based on my own informal and unscientific polling that Conservatives have quietly stopped pretending that voting fraud actually exists, and now simply resort to the standard wingnut Fight (IRS!Solyndra!Benghaaaai!) or Flight (BothSides!BothSides!BothSides!) response when confronted with yet another glaring example of Conservative racism and contempt for democracy. 

Which is progress of a sort I suppose.

In fact, according to my own sporadic and unscientific visits to the wingnut radio end of the dial, Democrats could solve this whole problem if they could just convince Barack Obama to stop apologizing for Murrica and break out some of his magic Green Lantern Leadership pixie dust.

I guess Dems just want to lose!