Chief national affairs analyst Kasie Hunt joined New Day on Tuesday to discuss CNN’s latest reason to hate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: “voter intimidation.”
Guest host Kaitlan Collins got the ball rolling by worrying about some changes to how the state conducts elections:
I want to ask you about something else though that's happening in Florida where Ron DeSantis is now one of the state's or one of the nation's only election police forces, essentially. He has signed this into law. It's a voting overhaul bill that creates a new election police force that basically gives them this tool which could be pretty powerful, depending on how he wields it, to investigate what's happening in elections in the state. And I wonder what lens you're viewing this through?
After claiming that voter fraud is “extremely rare, if not basically non-existent,” Hunt strongly suggested there were some racist motivations behind the idea: “What's, I think, important to continue to watch in the case of DeSantis is that, especially in the American South, the history behind law enforcement groups that were focused on voting has a very dark and difficult past.”
Hunt then argued it doesn’t actually matter what the force does, only what people think it will do:
And there is an intimidation factor regardless of what you actually are doing in terms of enforcing or -- apart from the actual actions a force like this might take if you are someone who is trying to figure out how to vote, what do you feel, in terms of, ‘okay, if I take this risk, if I try to do this, am I going to get myself in trouble, is this a problem?’ That's how voter intimidation works. So, I think as we're reporting out the story and following this, it's going to be really important to consider that kind of an impact.
CNN has set up a self-fulfilling prophecy. It doesn’t matter that Florida isn’t intimidating voters, but if it falsely reports that it is, people will believe it, which will lead to a lower turnout, which they will then claim validates their false reporting.
This segment was sponsored by Orkin.
Here is a transcript for the April 26:
New Day
4/26/2022
7:28 AM ET
KAITLAN COLLINS: I want to ask you about something else though that's happening in Florida where Ron DeSantis is now one of the state's or one of the nation's only election police forces, essentially. He has signed this into law. It's a voting overhaul bill that creates a new election police force that basically gives them this tool which could be pretty powerful, depending on how he wields it, to investigate what's happening in elections in the state. And I wonder what lens you're viewing this through?
KASIE HUNT: So, I mean, this -- first of all, Republicans, we're seeing them across the country try to tighten—to tighten-- their voter laws, but also to increase the penalties in the event of voter fraud. I think it's really important to underscore that voter fraud, especially on a large scale, is extremely rare, if not basically non-existent in the U.S. and I think Republicans across the board for the last couple of years, if there were instances of this, they would have made sure that we knew about it. And, frankly, the reality was they failed at all these court levels.
What's, I think, important to continue to watch in the case of DeSantis is that, especially in the American South, the history behind law enforcement groups that were focused on voting has a very dark and difficult past. And there is an intimidation factor regardless of what you actually are doing in terms of enforcing or -- apart from the actual actions a force like this might take if you are someone who is trying to figure out how to vote, what do you feel, in terms of, “okay, if I take this risk, if I try to do this, am I going to get myself in trouble, is this a problem?” That's how voter intimidation works. So, I think as we're reporting out the story and following this, it's going to be really important to consider that kind of an impact.
