Al Sharpton explained why checking the ID of voters is tantamount to putting black people in chains and selling them into slavery:
Al Sharpton: Protecting the Voting Rights
Casting a ballot is a right, not a privilege. New laws restricting that right are wrong.
By Al Sharpton
August 7, 2012

A voting rights march in the Alabama town of Selma in 1965 was broken up by baton-wielding police. (Associated Press)
The American Revolution, which created our nation, was a fight for self-governance.
The American Evolution, which delivered the promises of democracy to all Americans, was a longer struggle, requiring countless protests, marches, sacrifices and even lives lost, all of which led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This landmark legislation became the great equalizer, bringing about the end of discriminatory practices of voter disenfranchisement. It was a victory for justice and for all Americans.
Now we face a new threat: that of an American De-volution, which could reverse nearly 50 years of progress since the Voting Rights Act.
Across the country, states have passed or have proposed new rules for voting, such as photo ID requirements and restrictions in early and absentee voting. The laws are new, but to many of us they’re just the same old tricks. I remember when tactics like these were called Jim Crow.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, 10 states now have highly restrictive photo ID laws that require citizens to produce specific types of government-issued documents to vote: Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kansas, South Carolina, Alabama and Texas.
Alabama’s law won’t take effect this year, and others face legal scrutiny, but it’s possible that the restrictive rules will affect 127 electoral votes — almost half of the 270 needed to win the presidency in 2012.
And who are the voters who will be affected? As the Brennan Center reports, more than 1 in 10 eligible voters in the U.S. do not possess the kind of IDs required by those 10 states. More specifically, 1 in 4 African Americans, 1 in 6 Latinos and 1 in 5 Americans over age 65 lack the requisite ID.
Though it may be difficult for some of us to imagine, many of these people simply do not drive or cannot afford a vehicle and therefore don’t possess a driver’s license. And the process of obtaining a valid ID — even when the states issue them for free — can be costly to those on fixed incomes or for those who must take time off from work, lose wages and find the means to travel to a government agency. Often they must produce copies of items such as birth certificates, which not only cost money to reproduce but may take weeks to process.
If these added difficulties weren’t discouraging enough, in Wisconsin, Mississippi and Alabama, fewer than half of all ID-issuing offices are open five days a week and none are open on the weekends. And many have irregular operating hours. The Brennan Center documented an office in Mississippi open only on the second Thursday of the month, and in Wisconsin, only on the fifth Wednesday (only four months in 2012 have five Wednesdays).
Those championing tough new voter ID laws say they are concerned about voter fraud. I’ve heard their arguments: “What’s wrong with requiring voters to have an ID? After all, you need a state-issued ID to drive, to get on an airplane, to write a check. Why not to vote?”
Here’s why. On a fundamental level, that argument confuses privileges with rights. No American has a constitutional right to drive, fly or pay by check. We do not have constitutionally protected rights to rent cars or to use credit cards. That some people think these activities are comparable to voting is alarming — and revealing.
[Me: it’s at this point that Al Sharpton literally refutes himself if we just consider ONE fact that he refuses to mention]
Every American 18 or older has the right to vote. Poor Americans, black Americans, Americans who live in rural areas, Americans of every background. For decades we have recognized this truth, making it easier to vote, expanding options for casting ballots and improving access to registration. These new ID laws take us backward; they truly are nothing more than modern-day poll taxes and literacy tests.
We’re watching history repeat itself.
Why now? For the same reason partisans demanded to see President Obama‘s birth certificate. For the same reason some whisper that the president is a Muslim: to de-legitimize those with whom they disagree. The new voter suppression movement has taken off since the game-changing 2008 presidential race, when minorities and young voters turned out in record numbers.
Most of these first-time or occasional voters cast their ballots for Obama. Very quickly, Republicans began doing their best to stop them from voting again. Even a few hundred thousand votes not counted or cast in battleground states such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin could make a big difference in November.
I’ll be in Los Angeles on Thursday to keynote the Western Baptist State Convention. The focus of the convention this year will be on systematic voter disenfranchisement. We as a nation must realize the suppression is spreading. According to the Brennan Center, since the beginning of 2011, at least 180 restrictive bills have been introduced in 41 states, and 19 states have cut back on voting rights in various ways.
Millions of voters are at risk, and wherever we live, we must combat voter disenfranchisement nationwide. The ability for Americans to participate in the process was won by all; we now must join together once again to ensure that it stays that way.
The Rev. Al Sharpton is the president of National Action Network and the host of “PoliticsNation” on MSNBC.
I want you first to consider the picture. If you support voter ID laws, you’re one of those thugs who are literally beating black people for trying to vote. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves; you probably clubbed little baby black children, too. Well, at least the forty percent of black babies that escape Al Sharpton’s abortion holocaust. Consider that Planned Parenthood was caught on tape agreeing with the statement of being “against blacks in college.” Why? Because “The less black kids out there the better.” And consider that Al Sharpton is all for more killing of black babies.
Consider that liberal heroine Margaret Sanger said “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.”
Liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg agreed and explained, “Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”
Reverend Sharpton says “Amen to that!”
Apparently, there is something truly wrong with black children that Al Sharpton knows about.
Anyway, in an article about seeking laws that require that somebody be who they claim they are when they’re voting, Al Sharpton and the LA Times throw in a picture of black people being beaten. Because it is a well-documented fact (as per MSNBC) that absolutely every single person who wants Voter ID laws has physically taken a bat and beaten a black person into a coma. So that’s why the picture is so appropriate.
This is the point where Al Sharpton either reveals he is a truly stupid man or that he is an incredibly dishonest one:
Those championing tough new voter ID laws say they are concerned about voter fraud. I’ve heard their arguments: “What’s wrong with requiring voters to have an ID? After all, you need a state-issued ID to drive, to get on an airplane, to write a check. Why not to vote?”
Here’s why. On a fundamental level, that argument confuses privileges with rights. No American has a constitutional right to drive, fly or pay by check. We do not have constitutionally protected rights to rent cars or to use credit cards. That some people think these activities are comparable to voting is alarming — and revealing.
Every American 18 or older has the right to vote. Poor Americans, black Americans, Americans who live in rural areas, Americans of every background. For decades we have recognized this truth, making it easier to vote, expanding options for casting ballots and improving access to registration. These new ID laws take us backward; they truly are nothing more than modern-day poll taxes and literacy tests.
We’re watching history repeat itself.
Put on your thinking caps, boys and girls: is there a “right” that liberals LOVE to regulate and routinely flat-out try to deny and take away?
Hey, “Reverend” Al. Have you ever heard about this thing called the 2nd Amendment? Yeah, it’s pretty neat: it says, “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” It even says “right” right there!
It’s kind of interesting how you forgot about that right, Reverend Al. But I guess I can understand why: it turns that whole article of yours into something truly idiotic.
Al Sharpton has frequently protested guns. Al Sharpton’s partner in slime Jesse Jackson actually protested guns shops to try to shut down people from being able to buy or sell the guns that the Constitution says we’ve got a RIGHT which shouldn’t be INFRINGED.
It’s kind of convenient and interesting that Al Sharpton somehow forgot a RIGHT that he has dedicted himself to undermining while he is simultaneously arguing that such rights are sacrosanct.
This is why people like me use terms like “hypocrite” to describe people like Al Sharpton.
If Al Sharpton had so much as a microscopic particle of credibility, he would be out there demanding that everybody ought to be able to help themselves to a giant pile of guns. And anybody who tries to check or inspect the IDs of those who want to exercise their RIGHTS to keep and bear arms in any way, shape or form is tantamount to a club-weilding fascist thug beating on the head of some poor victom.
That’s right. If Al Sharpton and his idiot left were consistent in any way, shape or form, they would be loudly demanding that “ID checks” be immediately suspended for anyone trying to get his or her hands on a gun. Either that, or these hypocrite slimebags would be affirming that, you know what, yes, some rights carry responsibilities.
It isn’t that we refute the lunatic left with our arguments for voter ID laws; they refute themselves with their own idiotic arguments.
For the historical record, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party was ELECTED to rule Germany. Voting can be every damn bit as dangerous as guns – unless you’re fine with another Adolf Cockroach Hitler.
Either we have a damn RIGHT to demand that everybody voting be able to document who they say they are in order to prevent elections from being stolen or the left doesn’t have a right to check the ID of anyone who wants to get his or her hands on a gun. Period.
I write as somebody who views the right to vote and the right to keep and bear arms as require some level of inspection. Criminals shouldn’t be able to own guns; but criminals shouldn’t be able to VOTE, either. They shouldn’t be able to vote twice or ten times. They shouldn’t be able to vote in other people’s names. They shouldn’t be allowed to steal elections as they clearly did in the case of Al Franken. In other words, I write as somebody having something called “integrity” that Al Sharpton has never had and probably never will have.
As we speak, the same Democrats who are so loudly standing up for the right of undocumented people to vote because those who cheat vote Democrat are at the same time disenfranchising legitimate Floridian voters and military voters.
Let me just say one more thing: Al Sharpton cites the Voting Rights Act of 1965. For the historical record, I want you to note the Republican-Democrat voting tallies:
Senate: 77–19
- Democrats: 47–17 (73%-27%)
- Republicans: 30–2 (94%-6%)
House: 333–85
- Democrats: 221–61 (78%-22%)
- Republicans: 112–24 (82%-18%)
It is a FACT that Republicans supported the Voting Rights Act by a higher percentage in BOTH branches of Congress than did Democrats. I point this out because a lot of people are stupid and ignorant of the truth, having been indoctrinated by media propaganda lies.
Republicans are all FOR valid civil rights, just as they were when they fought a Civil War against Democrats to free the slaves.
Update, 8/15/12: Thank God a federal judge just ruled that Pennsylvania’s voter ID law can go forward.