A video obtained by CBS News and published this week<\/a> offers a clear window into the bigotry motivating the MAGA movement\u2019s voter suppression efforts.<\/p>\n

The video shows North Carolina conservative activist James Womack<\/a> directing members of his \u201celection protection\u201d group to be on the lookout for voters with \u201cHispanic-sounding last names,\u201d claiming their voter registrations could be \u201csuspicious.\u201d<\/p>\n

Womack\u2019s organization of activist volunteers is part of a coalition of groups challenging people\u2019s voter eligibility called the Election Integrity Network, which is headed by election-denying attorney Cleta Mitchell<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the video, which CBS says was provided by a progressive watchdog group and independently verified by the outlet, Womack discusses how to identify \u201csuspicious\u201d voters:<\/p>\n

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If you\u2019ve got folks that you, that were registered and they\u2019re missing information and they were registered in the last 90 days before the election and they\u2019ve got Hispanic-sounding last names, that probably is, is a suspicious voter. … It doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re illegal. It just means they\u2019re suspicious.<\/p>\n
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Womack told CBS he believes the voter lists are \u201ccorrupt\u201d and said \u201ccitizens have a right to that information and they analyze that information to identify potential illegal or improperly registered people.\u201d\u00a0He said the group takes multiple factors into consideration when flagging suspicious voters.<\/p>\n
The \u201cHispanic-sounding last name certainly is not exclusive,\u201d Womack told CBS, adding that \u201cmispronunciations\u201d and misspellings of \u201cArab\u201d names could also be suspicious.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Womack said his group doesn\u2019t target people based on race. But there\u2019s literally no reason other than xenophobia to think someone having a \u201cHispanic-sounding\u201d surname or mispronounced \u201cArab\u201d name (whatever that means) should heighten suspicion that they\u2019re an illegally registered voter. <\/p>\n
This is the natural result of Donald Trump, Republicans in Congress and conservative media figures promoting bigoted conspiracy theories<\/a> alleging Democrats are deliberately welcoming migrants into the country to have them vote illegally.\u00a0It cannot be overstated that this is a lie that aligns the GOP with the racist screeds of several mass shooters<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The Womack video offers yet another example of today\u2019s conservative movement relying on Jim Crow-style tactics<\/a> to hoist its candidates into office this election cycle.<\/p>\n
And lest you believe this kind of targeting can\u2019t have an impact, Republicans are seeking to purge thousands of voters from voter rolls (though their efforts are largely failing, as my colleague Lisa Rubin wrote for the MaddowBlog<\/a> this week). And we\u2019ve already seen examples of these challenges disproportionately sweeping up <\/a>eligible<\/em><\/a> voters of color<\/a>. On the campaign trail, Trump has started routinely raving about wanting to revive the United States of the 1890s<\/a>, and even the 1790<\/a>s. He longs for an era before nonwhite people were afforded equal access to participate in our political system. And his supporters are trying their hardest to give it to him, one racist voter suppression scheme at a time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Ja’han Jones<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n
Ja’han Jones is The ReidOut Blog writer. He’s a futurist and multimedia producer focused on culture and politics. His previous projects include “Black Hair Defined” and the “Black Obituary Project.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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A video obtained by CBS News and published this week offers a clear window into the bigotry motivating the MAGA movement\u2019s voter suppression efforts. The video shows North Carolina conservative activist James Womack directing members of his \u201celection protection\u201d group to be on the lookout for voters with \u201cHispanic-sounding last names,\u201d claiming their voter registrations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=743"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":922,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions\/922"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}