Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer compared requiring photo identification at the polls to locking your house at night during an appearance on MSNBC on Wednesday.
Spicer said he found it “extremely insulting” to suggest that “there was any effort, by anyone, to surpress the vote” and defended state legislatures that have passed voter ID laws. He said requiring photo identification at the polls was equivalent to a homeowner locking his doors at night.
“You do it not because it has a history of being broken into, but because you regard your property and your personal well-being as something precious and you want to protect it,” Spicer told MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts. “It’s not because there’s a history of necessarily your home being broken into, and so I think the question comes down, when it comes to protecting our right to vote. It’s not necessarily has there been rampant voter fraud in every state that we have to protect, it says this is a precious right that each of us has as an American.”
Spicer said public opinion was behind voter ID laws and that the Supreme Court been “very clear” that voter ID laws were constitutional, referring to a 2008 ruling that upheld Indiana’s voter ID law.
This year’s Republican platform explicitly endorses voter ID laws and many GOP-controlled state legislatures have passed such laws over the past few years. Courts have prevented voter ID laws from being implemented in Pennsylvania, Texas and South Carolina in 2012.
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