Fox News host Bill O’Reilly supports voter ID laws and says they don’t cause disfranchisement because “every African-American I know has an ID.”
During a discussion Tuesday night on “The O’Reilly Factor,” the conservative talk show host brought up the Supreme Court’s refusal to reinstate Ohio’s “Golden Week,” during which residents could register and vote early in the same day.
“In Ohio, you know there’s all kinds of stuff about people wanting to vote at the last minute, they want to vote after the election, they want to vote at 3 a.m.,” O’Reilly said to his show’s guests. “And if you say no you can’t do any of that, then you’re disenfranchising them.”
According to O’Reilly, there has “never has been” any evidence of disenfranchisement because of state-issued voter ID laws.
“You have to show an ID, you know, and then, ‘oh, no. You can’t do that. Oh, no, no, no. Then African-Americans won’t’ ― I’m saying to myself, ‘every African-American I know has an ID’ And not only that, the states that want that will send you an ID. They’ll come to your house with the ID and ice cream. They’ll give you ice cream with the ID,” O’Reilly explained.
A Gallup poll conducted in August found that 52 percent of Republicans see voter fraud as a “major” problem in the 2016 election.
A recent report published in the Washington Post found no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
