Trump Supports Homegrown Election Meddling

Last night, at yet another Make America Clap for Me Again rally in Florida, Donald Trump said: "We believe that only American citizens should vote in American elections. Which is why the time has come for voter ID, like everything else. Voter ID. If you go out and you want to buy groceries, you need a picture on a card, you need ID. You go out and you want to buy anything, you need ID. And you need your picture."

First of all, it's not accurate that you need ID to buy groceries, or anything else. You may be asked for an ID if you write a check or use a credit or debit card, but if you pay with cash, no one's asking to look at your ID. It would be considered a gross violation of privacy (and possibly illegal) to require an ID for a cash purchase.

So, big surprise, Trump once again doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. Or he does — and is simply knowingly lying in order to try to normalize the idea of voting ID requirements.

Although requiring ID to vote is not unconstitutional, thanks to a challenge brought in my home state of Indiana, it is nonetheless a blatant (and effective) strategy to disenfranchise people without state ID who are disproportionately likely to be Democratic voters: People of color, elderly people, disabled people, and/or people in poverty.

Republicans support voter ID laws because they hate actual democracy. When there are free and fair elections in this country without widespread disenfranchisement and voter suppression, they can't win.

So they support homegrown election meddling — and now the sitting president has (again) openly endorsed it from his podium.