While on a campaign stop on November 3, Mississippi Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith “joked” with a group of students that voter suppression is a “great idea.”
“There’s a lot of liberal folks in those other schools who maybe we don’t want to vote,” Hyde-Smith said outside her campaign bus. “Maybe we want to make it just a little more difficult. And I think that’s a great idea.”
After telling this hilarious “joke” that accurately describes decades of Republican policy, Hyde-Smith tweeted, either through a spokesperson or bizarrely speaking in the third-person: “It’s ok to still have a sense of humor in America isn’t it? These students enjoyed a laugh with Cindy despite out of state social media posts trying to mislead Mississippians.”
It’s not a joke if you’re doing it, Cindy!
Republicans are actively trying to make it harder to vote in her own state and, well, Georgia and North Dakota and Florida and, well, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, and, well, pretty much everywhere.
In fact, Mississippi was the original architect of voter suppression. In 1890, the white state legislature passed the Mississippi Plan, a set of restrictions designed to stifle the black vote by implementing a poll tax, literacy tests, and other measures, which was billed as a way to maintain integrity at the voting booth. The model spread across the South, and Republicans continue those same voter suppression tactics today.
Cool joke!