In Alabama, voters are seeing a campaign-season flyer warning that hate crimes are on the rise — with a photo of President Trump giving a thumbs-up next to photos of the Ku Klux Klan and a young boy wrapped in a “White Power” flag giving the Nazi salute.
The flyer, which says Alabama Republicans are all-in with President Trump to “Make America White Again,” is one of the more extreme — but by no means rare — attempts to stir up the Democratic Party’s base heading into next month’s election.
In neighboring Georgia, Democrats complain about Secretary of State Brian Kemp — who also happens to be the GOP’s candidate for governor — holding up approval of more than 50,000 voter registrations.
Mr. Kemp says they ran afoul of the state’s new “exact match” standard for verifying an applicant’s identity, but Democrats, including his gubernatorial opponent Stacey Abrams, point to an Associated Press estimate that 80 percent of the blocked applications are from racial or ethnic minorities.
The fight is only heightened by the history between Ms. Abrams, a longtime advocate for voter registration, and Mr. Kemp, who says she’s trying to open the door to immigrants living in the U.S. illegally and other fraudulent voters.
After years of complaining that GOP-run states have curtailed voting rights, Democrats are expecting their base — minority voters in particular — will respond this year at the polls in a sign of defiance and retaliation.
“I have been beaten, my skull fractured, and arrested more than forty times so that each and every person has the right to register and vote,” tweeted Georgia Democratic Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights icon. “Friends of [mine] gave their lives. Do your part. Get out there and vote like you’ve never voted before.”
In some cases the efforts to boost the Democratic vote may have crossed lines.
Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos said this week that he’s asked Attorney General Ken Paxton to investigate the Democratic Party after mailers went out asking some noncitizens to register to vote. The mailing even included a registration form with a pre-checked box affirming citizenship.
“The numerous calls and complaints we have received regarding pre-filled voter registration applications sent to ineligible voters are highly disturbing,” Mr. Pablos said in a statement.
The mailings came from the state Democratic Party in Austin, and included a warning that voters could miss their chance to vote if they didn’t meet an early October deadline.
Encouraging someone to submit a fraudulent registration form is a crime — though officials said it will take an investigation to know whether the party’s mailings crossed that line.
Logan Churchwell, spokesman for the Public Interest Legal Foundation, which spotted the pre-checked mailings, said Democrats were putting the immigrants themselves in a tough legal position, potentially inviting them to break voting laws for the sake of an “overhyped Senate race.”
The state Democratic Party has not responded to multiple requests for comment from The Washington Times.
With the country so evenly divided in many elections, fights over the size and scope of the voting population can be the difference between winning and losing. Democrats generally favor more open laws, arguing it’s unfair to deny any voter a chance to cast a ballot — and dismissing evidence of voter fraud.
Republicans, though, see that fraud and say it’s worth putting voters through hoops such as showing ID at the polls if bogus ballots are weeded out.
Michael Owens, chairman of the Cobb County Georgia Democratic Party, said the battle energizes voters because it touches on “two of the most volatile issues.”
“One, when dealing with people of color, particularly African-Americans it is voter suppression and the idea that you will not let me vote that strikes a chord, and then from the right I think it speaks directly to the heart of the Trump Republican base, which is the ’Oh my god’ fear of illegal immigrants,” Mr. Owens said. “They are definitely both strong motivators.”
But Republicans argue some of the motivators go over the line — such as the Alabama flyer, sponsored by the SOS Movement for Justice and Democracy and the Alabama New South Coalition.
“Their efforts to kill Obamacare, Food Stamps, Criminal Justice Reform, College Programs, Voting and Civil Rights can be stopped!!” it reads. “If you are sick and tired of being scared and tired vote November 6, 2018.”
“They should be ashamed of themselves,” said Terry Lathan, chair of the Alabama GOP. “Are these the same people who go to church on Sunday and sit in the pews and talk about loving their fellow man or woman, and then they turn around the other six days of the week and produce this to scare people?”
• Stephen Dinan contributed to this report.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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