Cooper Pushes Voter Suppression Smear in National Spotlight

RALEIGH – Governor Roy Cooper participated in a live event with Politico, in which he told the welcoming left-leaning outfit that Republican efforts to insure voting and elections are secure and trustworthy is merely a ruse to “suppress the vote.”

And by ‘suppress the vote,’ Cooper transparently employs the Democrats far and away favorite weaponized smear that Republicans are suppressing minority votes, because they’re racist. (But, of course.)

The online magazine featured the Governor of North Carolina as the headliner among several governors, seemingly fueling him with national attention and openly stoking further political ambitions for federal office. And Cooper played his part, reliably issuing the Left-Approved talking points to frame the anti-Republican narrative.

From POLITICO:

“North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper on Thursday said he’s prepared to make full use of his veto pen to stymie Republican-led effort to restrict voting access in the wake of the 2020 elections.

“I expect Republican leadership in our North Carolina legislature to follow a lot of other state legislatures in using this ‘big lie’ of voter fraud as an excuse for laws that suppress the vote,” Cooper, a Democrat, said during a POLITICO Live event. “Let’s just get real about it: These laws are intended to discourage people from voting.” […]”

Politico goes on to summarize the “big lie” with the by now standard, canned (non)refutations about ‘lost’ court cases, and turning real, demonstrable fraud and vulnerabilities to election integrity into crackpot conspiracy theory to be dismissed out of hand.

After most recently using it to scratch out kids’ earlier chance to return to school, Cooper goes on gloat about his veto leverage in the Old North State and how he can use it to block Republican reforms to voting rules:

“[…] “The good thing about having enough Democrats in my state legislature to uphold a veto is that we can stop some of those things,” Cooper said on Thursday. “It’s going to fall on the states in order to fight that off.”

Cooper, who won reelection in 2020 in a state Trump carried by less than 2 percentage points, said the GOP efforts highlighted the need for Democrats to play offense in 2022 and grow the number of governor’s mansions they control across the country. […]”

That which Democrat like Cooper wish to fight off at the state level are basic voter integrity reforms that address vulnerabilities. The pointing out of these vulnerabilities by any on the Right in 2021 amounts to dangerous conspiracy theory inciting insurrections. Actually, you might me marked a domestic terrorist for so much as suggesting mail-in balloting with lax signature requirements seems like a recipe for fraud.

Yet, even Democrats in North Carolina were concerned about just a couple short years ago. Remember this gem from N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein?

This was Stein trying to argue Voter ID isn’t needed, because all the fraud really happens via absentee or mail-in voting because of the incredible lack of simple integrity requirements. Now those same concerns are labeled ‘voter suppression.’

Indeed, Politico itself was shining a national spotlight on actual examples of fraud — the kind of fraud currently being warned about by Republicans — North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District just a couple years ago:

“[…] At issue are absentee ballot returns in Bladen and Robeson counties in rural eastern North Carolina. An analysis by Catawba College’s J. Michael Bitzer found that McCready won lopsided majorities of absentee ballots in seven of the eight counties that comprise the 9th District, except in Bladen County. Harris won 61 percent of the mail-in ballots there, even though registered Republicans accounted for 19 percent of the county’s accepted absentee ballots.

The North Carolina Democratic Party filed a half-dozen affidavits from voters in the area, who described handing over their ballots, some of them incomplete, to people who said they were assigned to pick up ballots in the area.

Bitzer also noted that Bladen and Robeson counties had unusually high percentages of requested absentee ballots that were never returned. In Robeson County, nearly two-thirds of the ballots were not returned, while Bladen had 40 percent that were not sent back. Those are high rates of non-return, as no other county exceeded 27 percent. […]”

Conspiracy theorist! Vote Suppressor! Insurrectionist!

Oh, wait. That 9th District saga turned out to be conspiracy fact, and the vulnerabilities that AG Stein previously alluded to were real opportunities for fraud.

Fast forward to 2021: protecting and projecting those real opportunities for fraud, and making monsters out of those who would dare address them with voter integrity reforms, is now required in order to be a Democrat in good standing.

Not to mention a model Democrat, on the rise and being teased about running for Senate or Vice President; a role Cooper so relishes and requires little actual leadership on his part.

Watch some of the narrative reinforcement and political grooming in the interview below:

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