17 Sep 2004 Black Conservatives on “Voter Suppression”

Project 21 is calling claims of voter suppression by the NAACP, People for the American Way and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights a “smear-and-fear” campaign.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, run by its uber-leftist chairman, Mary Frances Berry, is holding a formal meeting on “barriers to the ballot box” September 17.

Says a Commission press release on the briefing:

Recent allegations [of barriers to the ballot box] include events in Florida, where many elderly black voters have been reportedly intimidated by police officers investigating alleged absentee voting fraud; in Texas, where students at the predominately black Prairie View A&M University were threatened with arrest by the local district attorney, who erroneously suggested they were not eligible to vote in the county in which the school was located; South Dakota, where some Native American poll workers and voters asserted that voting fraud investigations were racially motivated and only served to intimidate and discourage Indian voters; and in Chicago, where problems with voter identification and provisional balloting implementation reportedly had racial implications.

Says Project 21’s Kevin Martin:

The same forces we saw in 2000 – those speaking of a concerted effort to disfranchise minorities – are once again making ridiculous allegations to make up for their lack of substance. They speak of voter suppression and intimidation, but they say nothing about the lax voter registration and identification rules that could lead to voter fraud.

For more, go here.