U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) believes “gullible” minorities believe lies about voter suppression from Democrats.
Lamborn made the comments Thursday on a conservative talk-radio show in Colorado Springs.
“The Democrats lie when they say, ‘Oh, this is to suppress votes,’ or ‘This is to hurt minorities.’ It’s just a lie,” Lamborn told KVOR host Richard Randall. “They want to stir up minorities who are gullible and believe that garbage.”
Randall had told Lamborn, who represents the Colorado Springs area, that Judicial Watch, a conservative advocacy group, has threatened to sue county clerks in Colorado if they didn’t “clean up voter rolls.”
Then Randall asked Lamborn if he was “concerned about voter fraud here in Colorado, but especially states like California and others.”
“Well, I am,” replied Lamborn. “And I think it’s legitimate for Republicans or anyone for that matter to make sure that county clerks and secretaries of state clean up their acts and really have transparent and accountable records, paper trails, and all of the above have cyber security.”
Experts told the Colorado Times Recorder that Lamborn is wrong in multiple ways.
“I am aware of no evidence supporting the statement of Rep. Lamborn that minority voters are more ‘gullible’ to supposedly false claims of voter suppression coming from Democrats than others are,” said University of California Prof. Richard L. Hasen, who’s the author of Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy. “And while doing list maintenance is a sound election administration practice, there is little doubt that some of the more aggressive voter purge efforts have removed large numbers of eligible voters from voter rolls.”
An NAACP official said Lamborn’s comment “adds insult to the injury” of the injustice of voter suppression.
“Saying that ‘minorities’ are gullible for believing reports of voter suppression adds insult to the injury of this injustice,” said Rosemary Lytle, State President of the NAACP for Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming. “We have states like Georgia where there is a “use it or lose it” policy that governs the right to vote — as in if you miss voting once, you are dropped from the rolls. We have states like Colorado where robo calls targeting people in Pueblo once said, ‘Don’t forget to vote on Wednesday’ when elections are held on Tuesday. And Doug Lamborn dares to call Black and Brown people ‘gullible’? We are only gullible if we believe the lies of the so-called Congressman who was elected to represent us.”
Election officials in Colorado have denied Judicial Watch’s allegation that voter rolls are out of order.
Lamborn did not return a call seeking to know why he thinks minorities are gullible to believing Democrats’ alleged lies about voter suppression–information on what those lies are.
This is not the first time the Colorado Springs Republican has made racist comments on conservative talk radio. In 2011, Lamborn apologized after generating national headlines for telling a conservative radio host that being associated with President Obama’s policies is like “touching a tar baby.”
Lamborn’s inflammatory comments regularly make news. For example, last year, he called the impeachment inquiry a “Soviet-style kangaroo court.”
Listen to Randall on KVOR Feb. 20 here:
