Right wing media darling and persistent fast talker Ben Shapiro has come up with what is
maybe his dumbest take ever, and it has everything to do with voter suppression. And the bill passed
in Georgia, which has been the subject of the very same boycotts that we talked about earlier,
which have led to Donald Trump announcing counter boycotts of a bunch of different organizations
and companies here. As Ben Shapiro saying, waiting a long time to vote is no more voter
suppression than long lines at Disneyland are rider suppression. I'm not kidding. This is really
Ben Shapiro's take. He builds up to the Disneyland thing. We'll look at some other parts of the clip.
First, Jim Crow explicitly created a separate system of law for black Americans and treated
them as inferior. There is nothing in the law like that that it's not only an
overstatement, it's just an outright lie. Now, what's interesting about this is that
Ben argues because voter suppression laws don't have anything overtly racist written in them,
like they don't mention black people or whatever, because it's not overt, it can't be racist. That's
very, very wrong. You can, for example, target black neighborhoods. You can target
black Christians who like to organize rides to go vote on Sunday during early voting after leaving
church. You can target them by saying no Sunday early voting as an example, just because it's
not explicitly written that this is to target black people doesn't mean that the impact can't
be racist. I'm sure Ben knows that his audience doesn't, and he's playing down to an audience
that is ignorant, quite frankly. Let's continue. But, says Jemele Hill, all of corporate America
should resonate to the line. The law imposes new voter ID requirements for absentee ballots. Well,
clearly, that's racist. I mean, you mean you have to show that you are who you say you are
when you vote absentee? If you can explain to me how that's racist, I'm willing to hear it.
Anyone Bueller, Bueller in limits, use of ballot drop boxes? Oh, you mean like ballots wrapped
boxes where people could just stuffed the ballot box or take ballots out of the ballot box? Hmm.
The scholarship on how voter ID is a racial issue is very extensive. It's a very long list.
You some things to consider. Minority voters are more likely to lack ID. OK,
we know minorities tend to be less economically well-off in the United States than whites.
So while the voter I.D. itself is free, as right wingers will often tell you,
the documents you often need to get your voter ID aren't free. And if you don't have those
documents, you not only have to pay for them, you have to take time off from work to get ID.
Less economically advantaged individuals are less able to take time off from work to go and
get the documents and then get the ID. But we also know that voter ID laws are enforced in a
discriminatory manner. There's a very good Caltech MIT study which found that when you look at who is
questioned about their ID, minority voters are far more often questioned about ID than white
voters. So understand that he's wrong about everything he's saying. Then Ben Shapiro talks
about taking ballots out of Dropbox's. Listen, that's theoretically possible, no ballot box I've
ever seen makes that possible with the Dropbox's I used when I voted, it's just a simple engineering
issue. There's no way to take ballots out. You know, the path into it's an engineering issue.
And either Ben is ignorant to that or again, knows his audience will fall for it. Let's continue it.
Hands of state officials more power over local elections. Even before the legislation passed,
many voters of color in Georgia faced hours long queues at the polls. By the way, voter suppression
doesn't involve long lines any more than long lines at Disneyland. Our ride suppression,
you know, voter suppression is voter suppression is where you don't get to vote.
Now, there is the climax of stupidity, the height of ignorance. It's actually
hard to know where to start because there's so much wrong with that. Benn's argument is
if there's a long line for a roller coaster, it's no more suppression than if there's a
long line to vote. Now, first of all, voting is a right. It's a constitutional right. People who
are at Disneyland are in a privileged position of choosing to go to entertainment if they can
afford it. Disneyland is pretty expensive. Disney Disneyland also is an open one one day per year
with some extra days that are being negotiated and argued about, OK, there's no comparison
here. There's no equivalence whatsoever. Second, when it comes to waiting periods for owning guns,
suddenly it taking a while is suppression of one Second Amendment right. They say people like Ben
say awaiting if you have to, you have a constitutional right to a gun.
The day you want it, you should be able to get it. OK, so does the same apply to voting? No, no. Same
day registration is dangerous. Oh, and would you apply the same thing to waiting in long lines to
vote? No, no, no. That's totally different. So the hypocrisy number three, aside from the absurdity
of comparing roller coasters to voting, Disneyland isn't trying to make light lines longer.
The strategy by the American right is exactly that. Make the lines longer in left leaning,
in poorer in nonwhite areas so that those voters may say this is a pain, I'm going home,
but keep the lines short in the wealthier, right leaning and whiter areas by having more
polling places and more polling booths. And case in point, this isn't just a hypothesis.
A study in Georgia found that the average wait time when polls closed was six minutes
in areas that are 90 percent white and fifty one minutes in areas that are 90 percent nonwhite.
It's already happening. It's not, oh, they might do this, they've been doing it
somehow. Ben Shapiro was able to put together a segment that completely lacks logic and
nuance and accuracy, like it almost takes effort to put together such a dumb take. And these are
the types of arguments that you and I might hear them and say. But it would fall for that.
Trump won in 2016. People fall for really stupid arguments all the time. We'll take a quick break.
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