If you’re disabled, live in an area where polling places are few and far between, or are a person of color, right-wing commentator Josh Bernstein has a message for you: tough toodles.
Indeed, he wants to make it harder for people to vote, Right Wing Watch [1] reports. In a video posted [2] Sunday to his website, he added his thoughts on former President Donald Trump’s CPAC speech earlier that day. Trump called on states to enact stricter voter suppression measures, including implementing voter ID restrictions and limiting the use of early voting and mail-in voting.
Bernstein agreed with Trump’s remarks but insisted they don’t go far enough.
“We cannot have early voting,” he opined. “We should have one day to vote, and no, it should not be [a day] off, OK? You either go in before work, you either go on your lunch break, or you go after work. That’s it. If you can’t get there in that one day, then it wasn’t important enough for you, and to be quite frank, I don’t want you to vote. If you can’t make it in that one day, stay home.”
There’s nothing original about this guy. He’s a cookie-cutter right-winger and of course, he wants people to stay home if they have hurdles to leap in order to vote. Because people of color are among those who face steep hurdles in trying to vote.
A 2018 poll conducted by The Atlantic [3] and the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) discovered “evidence of deep structural barriers to the ballot for Black and Latino voters, specifically in the 2016 election. More than that, the survey finds that the deep wounds of Jim Crow endure. leaving America’s democratic promise unfulfilled. The survey found that while the language of restrictive voting laws appears neutral, they are anything but.
“The poll, conducted in June, surveyed Americans about their experiences with voting, their assessments of the country’s political system, and their interfaces with civics. The results, especially when analyzed by race, are troublesome,” The Atlantic notes. “They indicate that voter suppression is commonplace and that voting is routinely harder for people of color than for their white counterparts.”
I’m including a smattering of what the survey found:
“The new data support perhaps the worst-case scenario offered by opponents of restrictive voting laws. Nine percent of Black respondents and nine percent of Hispanic respondents indicated that, in the last election, they (or someone in their household) were told that they lacked the proper identification to vote. Just three percent of whites said the same. Ten percent and 11 percent of black respondents and 11 percent of Hispanic respondents reported they were incorrectly told that they weren’t listed on voter rolls, as opposed to five percent of white respondents. In all, across just about every issue identified as a common barrier to voting, Black and Hispanic respondents were twice as likely, or more, to have experienced those barriers as white respondents.”
One can safely assume that since Trump’s supporters are largely white, [4] they aren’t facing these barriers. Bernstein is also likely aware of this and at the very least wants the status to remain quo. He’s comfortable in his white privilege. For him, it’s come home to roost.
He’s willing to make a couple of exceptions though.
Military members and those who are sick fit in his tiny window of those who should be allowed to vote via mail-in ballots, but those ballots should only be made available the week before the election. He also wants the Constitution to be amended to make the use of mail-in voting illegal for any other reason.
Oh, and not only that but we “must raise the voting age to a minimum of 21,” he said, adding that each voter must provide “proof of income” at the polling place.
“I want proof of income at the polling stations,” Bernstein added. “I want to see that you have skin in the game and that you are not planning on sponging off of the system. …I’m talking about people on welfare and things like that, that have been on the system and have been exploiting the system for many, many years. They should not be allowed to vote. You should have skin in the game because you’re probably going to vote for the people that are dependent on them, and that’s not good for the country.”
“I’ll admit it,” he said. “I wanted to make it harder to vote in America, not easier.”
His myopic view doesn’t allow for any of the problems listed above, and he ignores the fact that all Americans “have skin in the game” including those on “welfare.” Quite obviously he wanted a Trump dictatorship and he’s venting bile because that didn’t happen.
Here’s a snippet of what he had to say below.