Well, who would have guessed that a Republican candidate had her voter registration tossed in the state she's running in because she's registered in Washington, DC and possibly Virginia?
But that's just what happened to Leslie Rutledge, running for Attorney General in Arkansas. And now Republicans are outraged over the Voter ID laws they put into effect to suppress black votes. Surprise! It also catches white blonde people in the net sometimes.
Arkansas Attorney General candidate Leslie Rutledge is crying foul over the cancellation of her voter registration form. Rutledge, the Republican nominee for Attorney General, was kicked off the voter rolls after it was discovered that she failed to cancel previous voter registrations in Washington, DC and Virginia, and re-register in Pulaski County when she moved. Pulaski County Clerk Larry Crane, a Democrat, said he was legally obligated to remove her after receiving a letter flagging this issue.
Oh, poor Republicans. Hoist by their own petard on the same nonsense they shoved on everyone else.
Rutledge argued that she tried to register to vote in Pulaski County, but that the clerk’s office gave her a “change of address” form instead. “I don’t know if I made any mistakes except listening to the clerk and I should have insisted they accept my form when they refused it,” Rutledge told ArkansasMatters.com.
Voters around the country can sympathize with Rutledge on this point. Reports of confusion and misdirection by poll workers and elections officials emerged in several states during the 2012 election. In Ohio, for example, some voters have even been criminally prosecuted for fraud because they followed flawed instructions. During voter purges in Florida and Colorado, many eligible voters were removed for similar reasons Rutledge was; an outdated address or a typo was enough to flag voters as fraudulent.
The Republican National Lawyers Association has also come to Rutledge’s defense,expressing outrage that she was “systematically removed from voter rolls within 90 days of a federal election.” RNLA Chairman J. Randy Evans went on, “The fact is that it is a clear and unmistakable attempt at the most harmful kind of voter suppression in violation of federal law – removing a qualified female voter from the rolls notwithstanding her valid registration and actual votes in the last 4 elections in violation of her civil rights. Democrats should be embarrassed.”
Ironically, the RNLA has been instrumental in pushing mass voter purges across the country, specifically defending the right to purge voters within 90 days of the election.
I suppose it wouldn't be right to tell them that the only reason these laws are in place is to prevent that voter fraud that doesn't actually exist, right?
