An MSNBC analyst flagged what he called a "revealing exchange" between a North Carolina Republican and a House hearing witness who said her vote has been put at risk by the GOP.
House Republicans held a hearing on Tuesday focused on state voter roll purges and efforts to make it easier for states to remove voters from registration lists. The House Administration Committee held the hearing, which featured testimony from conservative nonprofit leaders and people affected by voter removals.
Republican committee members argued that voter registration rolls are too lax, and pushed for stricter purges of voter rolls, including relaxing federal restrictions that prevent states from purging rolls within 90 days of federal elections.
MSNBC's Ja'han Jones slammed the hearing as a "right-wing pep rally for voter suppression." He said the hearing encouraged Republicans to "pursue voter purges and stricter voter ID laws — both of which are voter suppression tactics that have been found to disproportionately disenfranchise nonwhite voters."
House Republicans, he added, "as one might expect, didn’t seem to mind."
"In a revealing exchange, Rep. Greg Murphy of North Carolina told Mary Kay Heling — a witness from his state who testified that her vote had been jeopardized as Republicans sought to toss thousands of ballots in last year’s North Carolina Supreme Court race — that her potentially canceled vote wasn’t the worst thing that could happen," wrote Jones.
Murphy gave an eyebrow-raising response.
“The experience that you went through, ma’am, was horrible,” Murphy said, adding: “It’s much worse if we have somebody voting who shouldn’t than somebody — sadly enough — who had to go through what you did.”
Jones slammed Murphy over the reply.
"Sounds a lot like 'sorry, not sorry' to me. And that sentiment tells you all you need to know about the sacrifices Republicans are willing to make to peddle their bogus conspiracy theories about voting fraud and manipulate electoral processes in their favor.
It’s a blatantly illiberal power grab in plain sight," he concluded.
