Former Secretary of State and ardent supporter of President Obama Colin Powell has now suggested that voter identification laws in North Carolina are racist. Doubling down on his suggestions that Republicans “still look down on minorities” and carry a “dark vein of intolerance” back in January, Powell said that North Carolina’s requirement that voters show a photo identification in order to vote “punishes” minorities: “What it really says to the minority voters is…’We really are sort of punishing you.”
He added, “I want to see policies that encourage every American to vote, not make it more difficult to vote,” stating that “there is no voter fraud. How can it be widespread and undetected?”
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).