The Nation’s justice correspondent Elie Mystal argued on “Morning Joe” Monday that all U.S. voter registration laws should be eliminated.
Mystal argued that any American should only have to meet eligibility requirements, such as age, in order to cast a ballot during elections, suggesting that voter registration has a racist and anti-immigrant undertone. He stated that voting rights need to be expanded in order to help more Democrats vote.
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“We could eliminate all voter registration laws. You see, when Democrats get in charge we try to protect voting rights. We don’t make voting easier. Now I’m all for voter eligibility requirements, we might disagree with what those requirements should be. But let’s say that there should be an age limit to vote, I might say 16, you might say 18, but I’m not gonna say 8. So we’re gonna agree that there should be voter eligibility requirements, but once you’re eligible, why do you have to preregister? Why is that even a thing?” Mystal said.
“It wasn’t a thing in this country at the founding, we didn’t have voter preregistration in 1787, we didn’t have voter preregistration in 1821, we only started having voter registration generally speaking after the Civil War,” Mystal continued. “Why do you think that is? It’s because a bunch of freed African slaves were migrating up north and all of a sudden New York was like ‘we need some registration up in here.’ A bunch of immigrants from Europe, [from] Ireland and Italy were coming to New York, people were like ‘oh, we need some registration in here.’”
As the population rapidly expanded, U.S. states largely adopted voter registration requirements between the 1870s and World War I due to the increasing need to prevent fraud, confusion and conflicts during elections, according to the Institute for Rapid Government.
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Mystal appeared to blame voter registration laws for former Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss in the 2024 election, claiming millions of eligible voters did not show up because they were not registered.
“We have to expand voting rights so that the 90 million people who sat on the couch and sat out this last election between democracy and fascism so that maybe they have a little bit of an easier time getting off the couch and come participate in the democracy,” Mystal continued.
Democrats have fought against requiring voter identification or any documents proving eligibility since Republicans raised election integrity concerns after the 2020 election. Of the 19 states Harris won in 2024, 18 of them lack any requirements related to photo identification in order to vote, while Colorado and Washington hold all of their elections by mail.
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The party has even expressed support for permitting illegal immigrants to vote in elections. House Democrats urged Congress to vote against a Republican-led bill to bar The D.C. Noncitizen Voting Act, which the Washington, D.C., city government passed in 2022 to allow illegal immigrants to vote in local elections.
Mystal has a long history of bashing the history of the U.S., the Founding Fathers and the Constitution, stating on “The View” in March 2022 that the nation’s most sacred document is “kind of trash.” In May 2022, he further accused the Founders of being “racist, misogynist jerk faces” because they did not recognize abortion as a fundamental right back in the 1780s.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
