Attorney General Merrick Garland recently declared his intentions to actively combat voter ID laws being enacted in various states, falsely claiming that such laws “disadvantage minorities.”
As reported by Breitbart, Garland appeared alongside Vice President Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) at an event in Selma, Alabama on Sunday. At the event, Garland described such efforts to protect election integrity as “discriminatory, burdensome, and unnecessary.”
Garland framed his speech through the perspective of the civil rights movement, claiming that voting rights for African-Americans have “never been steady,” and adding that voter ID laws allegedly make it more difficult “for millions of eligible voters to vote and to elect the representatives of their choice.”
“Such measures threaten the foundation of our system of government,” Garland continued, speaking at the Selma Tabernacle Baptist Church.
Garland said that his Department of Justice (DOJ) has increased the total number of lawyers working for the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division, so that they can combat such laws, which Garland further described as “restrictions on access to the ballot, including those related to mail-in voting, the use of drop boxes, and voter ID requirements.”
However, voter ID laws have consistently proven popular with the American people as the most effective way to prevent voter fraud. A poll from Rasmussen Reports shows that about 75% of respondents support voter ID laws that require showing some form of photo identification before voting, with just 21% being against the idea.
Voter fraud has become a more prominent issue in the aftermath of the 2020 election, where a handful of Secretaries of State and Governors unilaterally changed election procedure in swing states, without the consent of the state legislatures as required by the Constitution. Ostensibly meant to accommodate then-ongoing lockdowns due to the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, such measures included ballot drop-boxes, third-party ballot-harvesting, increased vote-by-mail capabilities, and reduced requirements for verification. It is widely believed that these measures may have produced enough fraud to change the results of the 2020 election, swinging it away from President Donald Trump and in favor of Democrat Joe Biden.