Conservative Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberly Strassel on Sunday asserted that President Barack Obama had made a mistake by talking about voter ID during his speech in Selma over the weekend.
"Right now, in 2015, fifty years after Selma, there are laws across this country designed to make it harder for people to vote," the president said at an event commemorating the events of "Bloody Sunday."
"As we speak, more of such laws are being proposed. Meanwhile, the Voting Rights Act, the culmination of so much blood and sweat and tears, the product of so much sacrifice in the face of wanton violence, stands weakened, its future subject to partisan rancor," Obama pointed out. "If every new voter suppression law was struck down today, we’d still have one of the lowest voting rates among free peoples."
During a panel discussion on Fox News Sunday, conservative columnist George Will argued that activists had hijacked the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, and it was part of growing trend of liberals lying about cases to push an agenda.
"In Ferguson, the 'don't shoot' fed the narrative about how the police are inherently dangerous to minorities," Will insisted. "What the report demonstrates to me, by the way, is not, it seems to me, bias, but disparate impact."
Strassel agreed: "It's like George said about the narrative. One of the unfortunate things about the speech he gave in Selma, and most of it was great, he actually made really good points, he was very rousing. But he just felt compelled and he had to throw in this argument that there's still a big problem because of voter ID laws across the country."
"And that feeds another one of these narratives," she continued. "Which is just simply not true, it's not a central focus. If you look at 2012, black voter turnout exceeded that of white voter turnout. And in states with the strictest voter ID laws."
