John Oliver’s show “Last Week Tonight” returned Sunday to illustrate the hypocrisy in voter ID laws, which critics say disproportionately affect black and Latino voters.
“Voter impersonation fraud is incredibly rare,” Oliver said.
In 14 years, there were 31 possible instances out of more than a billion ballots cast, according to Oliver, yet, one of the reasons for strict voter identification laws cited by conservative lawmakers in South Carolina was a need to stop dead people from voting in elections.
As Oliver’s team found, there is no real basis for for the fear: Only five ballots of more than 1.3 million ballots cast cast could not be accounted for in South Carolina’s 2012 election.
“This is the biggest overreaction to a manageable problem since Sleeping Beauty’s father ordered all the spinning wheels in the land to be burned,” Oliver said. “This is an agrarian economy, we need those spinning wheels! Why don’t you just watch you daughter for one day in her fucking life?”
Watch the video via HBO: