DOJ Says Florida Republicans INTENTIONALLY Trying To Disenfranchise Non White Voters

The DOJ has argued in a new court filing that the state of Florida (run by Republicans) intentionally tried to disenfranchise black voters with a slate of new voting laws. This is also what a lower court had previously ruled, but the Florida government has appealed this ruling in order to continue suppressing the vote in the state. Republicans are terrified of making it easier to vote, and Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains why that is.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

The department of justice has filed a brief in court this week, arguing that Florida's recently passed recently, meaning in the last year and a half new voter restrictions are in fact intentionally, they use the word intentionally designed to disenfranchise non-white voters here in the state of Florida and specifically black voters. And they say this of course violates section two of the voting rights act, which of course is why the whole thing is in court. But see the do D uh, DOJ, excuse me, didn't just come up with this on their own. They're basing their statements in this new filing this week on what the lower court judge already ruled because Florida's voting laws were challenged in court long ago, and the Republican controlled state lost because the lower court judge said, yeah, this is clearly designed to make fewer black people vote in Florida's elections.

So the DOJ in their filing this week is simply building off of that because of course the Republican controlled state of Florida appealed that decision. And now the appellate court will be the ones to decide on whether or not Florida's voting laws do. In fact, violate section two of the voting rights act. So here is what these Florida voting laws do, um, limit the availability of absentee ballot drop boxes, uh, there's new regulations for third party voter registration groups, which makes it even harder to register people to vote. Uh, they've banned giving food and water to people waiting in line to vote. And of course, that was one of the things. When it first came out, made headlines all over the country. You can't give somebody a bottle of water. If they've been waiting out in the Florida heat, cuz trust me folks, even in November, we've got Florida heat and it sucks.

You can't give 'em a bottle of water. Even if they've been standing outside for two, three hours, doesn't matter if they've missed lunch. You can't say, oh well here's a sandwich. Nope, that's illegal, illegal in the state of Florida. And of course, most of the times where do those voting lines form in lower income, predominantly black communities. And of course that is also by design limit polling hours limit number of polling stations, all things that this Florida legislation does. And of course it specifically targets those black communities all across the state of Florida because those are the people Republicans don't want voting because by and large, they typically don't vote in large numbers for Republicans, all of this, whether it's Florida or Georgia or Texas or any of these other states that put forward, these voting restrictions, they do it because they want fewer people to vote. That's obvious. And the reason for that as many Republicans

Have told us, everybody from Donald Trump to Rand Paul is because when you have more people voting, more people showing up to vote that doesn't end well for Republicans, they know what they're doing and they have admitted it. So hopefully these courts, assuming we don't get placed in front of Republican judges here, hopefully they understand and see through what these Republicans are doing. Hopefully they see that these voting laws are as the lower court basically told us exceptionally racist and they put an into it before the midterms happen.