Critical Race Theory Goes to the Polls

Why would anyone, let alone the Attorney General of the United States, oppose measures designed to reduce voter fraud, such as the simple requirement that voters show identification before voting?

For that matter, why would anyone object to homeowners locking their homes upon leaving, or to motorists locking their cars when they get out of the car? Some actions are so obviously dictated by such simple prudence that objecting to them would inevitably raise eyebrows.

So why would Attorney General Eric Holder and so many others on the left leave themselves open to the perception that they are “asking for” voter fraud by opposing voter ID? That perception was worsened by two recent news reports about the risk of voter fraud that ran just as the Justice Department blocked a new voter ID law in Texas.

A recent video by James O’Keefe of Project Veritas shows how easy it would be to commit voter fraud in Vermont. As reported on Breitbart.com, a Veritas agent went to different voting places around Vermont, each time giving a different name, and each time was offered a primary ballot. In an earlier video released on The Daily Caller, O’Keefe had raised similar concerns about the ease of obtaining ballots in dead peoples’ names in New Hampshire.

Further casting the DOJ’s decision in a questionable light is a report in the March issue of Townhall Magazine that raised concerns of voter fraud in the congressional district of Texas Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee. True the Vote, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that works to promote electoral integrity, found multiple issues that raised concerns about the integrity of elections, including registrations that listed vacant lots as addresses. It also found that 25 percent of the voter registrations in Jackson Lee’s district had critical errors that could raise questions about the integrity of the vote, an unfortunate backdrop for the DOJ’s decision to strike down a law to limit voter fraud.

The left claims that voter ID laws place a special burden upon minorities, who may be less likely to have the required identification and who may be burdened by any costs involved. But Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has reported that Texas will offer the required documentation for free, so the cost argument does not hold in the Texas case. The left’s second argument is that voter ID may somehow suppress voter turnout among minorities, but high minority turnout in states with voter ID should have alleviated that concern.

So, if voter ID does not put minority voters at an unfair disadvantage, why does the left persist in its opposition to even the most minimal efforts at ensuring that people who vote in our elections are legally entitled to do so? The most plausible answer comes from left-wing ideology, as we show in our book, Waking The Sleeping Giant.

The recently released video of the young Barack Obama embracing Derrick Bell, a leftist professor at Harvard who was central to the development of Critical Race Theory, triggered limited public interest in this racial version of Marxist social criticism. Few things can be as dry Marxist theory, but the real issue is that these academic theories tend to work their way from the universities out into society at large. The boring academic language is lost, and the practical application of Marxist theories hits us where we live.

According to the theory, racism is so embedded within our current social and legal system that the system cannot be reformed by appealing to traditional notions of equal treatment under the law. The implication is that, in essence, minorities need special protection, not just equal protection, in order to balance the corruption of the system. The practical application is that followers of this line of thinking reject the traditional notion of racial equality in favor of special status for minorities.

From that perspective, the Justice Department’s seeming indifference to the risk of voter fraud is yet another instance of this administration operating from a radically different worldview than that of most Americans, one more influenced by Marxist ideas than by the Judeo-Christian worldview on which this nation was founded.

Then there is the more mundane explanation of the left’s position. Ask yourself who is likely to benefit from voter fraud, and remember the left’s motto from the 1960s: “By any means necessary.”

Dr. Timothy Daughtry is a former clinical psychologist and co-author of a new book, “Waking The Sleeping Giant: How Mainstream Americans Can Beat Liberals At Their Own Game.”
He advises candidates at the local, state, and federal level on understanding and countering leftist tactics. Dr. Daughtry is the Chairman and CEO of Concord Bridge Consulting.