On his Saturday evening show, liberal CNN host Van Jones devoted several minutes to Democratic charges of "voter suppression" by Republicans, and even misleadingly used an edited clip of Georgia GOP gubernatorial nominee Brian Kemp from 2014 as the CNN host suggested it was evidence the GOP candidate wanted to block minorities from voting in his state.
At 7:46 p.m. Eastern, during an interview with former Obama White House advisor Valerie Jarrett, Jones brought up the issue: "I'm concerned about the whole voter suppression idea," and then noted the "exact match law" in Georgia that requires that the name on a new voter registration match exactly with the person's name on other documents. He then added:
Any mispelling or any other small error could mean you can't vote, and they got 50,000 Georgians who have had their voter registration frozen. Most of them are black -- pending lawsuit there. And then in North Dakota, is now requiring residents to show voter ID with a current street address. You think, "No big deal." That could hurt Native-Americans that live on tribal lands who often don't have street addresses.
After beginning the segment by asserting that a number of states have passed new laws "to restrict access to the ballot box," he then claimed: "All of this diproportionately hurts racial minorities and the poor."
Jones cited a PRRI survey from 2016 which claimed that minorities were two or three times as likely as whites to report that they or someone the lived with were hindered in trying to vote as a result of voter ID laws, or were incorrectly told their names were not on the voting list.
Although Jones did not mention it, the same survey also oddly found that minorities were three times as likely to report that they had failed to vote simply because they had missed the deadline for registration, with no explanation as to how simply having a deadline that applies to everyone could amount to racial discrimination.
Jones then continued: "These laws are often pushed by Republican state legislators. Why? Well, according to some of them, it helps them win elections."
After a clip of Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel crediting voter ID laws with keeping the 2016 election "clean and honest" in his state, as if Jones found something wrong with that goal, the CNN host then added: "And now listen to Georgia Secretary of State, Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp, expressing concern about get-out-the-vote efforts."
Then came a clip of Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp in a speech from September 2014, although the year was mis-labeled on screen as 2016. Kemp: "The Democrats are working hard. All these stories about them, you know, resgistering all these minority voters that are out there and others that are sitting on the sidelines, and if they can do that, they can win these elections in November."
Not mentioned was that he had been speaking about how easy Georgia had made it to register to vote online, and, in the next sentence, he had declared that "we've got to do the exact same thing," and then encouraged Republicans to get their friends to register to counteract any new voters registered by Democratic groups.
As Jones suggested that voters would be prevented from voting because of new laws, he did not bring up the ability to use provisional ballots, and it was left to his guest, Jarrett, to bring up provisional ballots and encourage viewers to go to the polls and insist on being allowed to vote.
