Getting Serious on Voter Suppression
Comedians Weigh in on Why Some Politicians Don’t Want You to Vote
Voter suppression is no laughing matter but sometimes humor can help people understand an issue better. Watch John Oliver demolish those who only want the right people to vote.
There is no evidence that in-person voter fraud is a problem anywhere in the country. Still, under the guise of protecting democracy from this non-existent threat, state legislatures throughout the nation are enacting stringent ID requirements. In the process, they have disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of eligible voters.
If the true motives for these voter suppression efforts weren’t so sinister, the absurdity of voter ID requirements would almost be funny. And that is why it might just take a comedian like John Oliver to show us how ridiculous these laws — and the people proposing them — truly are.
Watch a clip from his HBO show, as well as two other videos on voter suppression, below.
Related front page panorama photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from John Oliver (Steve Jennings for TechCrunch / Wikimedia – CC BY 2.0), Lewis Black (Chad J. McNeeley, U.S. Navy / Wikimedia) and Rev. William Barber (Josh Rushing / Flickr – CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
