title:  Did Mike Pence Use The Police To Illegally Suppress The Vote Of Tens Of Thousands Of Black People In Indiana?
text: Right in the middle of the nine thousand scandals swirling around Donald Trump comes one about his running mate, Mike Pence. As governor of Indiana, Pence oversaw everything from legalized discrimination to destroying the state s educational system, and there was even an attempt to destroy freedom of the press. Now, it s come out that he may have engaged in some voter suppression as well   particularly against Indiana s black voters.This is so much worse than the clearly fraudulent voter ID law. The Indiana State Police raided the offices of the Indiana Voter Registration Project (IVRP) in an alleged attempt to root out  voter fraud . IVRP didn t see it that way, and neither did advocacy groups. They saw it as a deliberate attempt to shut them down, slowing registration and nullifying thousands of registration applications for black people across the state. The whole  initiative,  if it can even be called that, started in nine counties, and then expanded to 56 counties shortly after this raid.The IVRP is based in Indianapolis, which has a higher black population than the rest of the state. Patriot Group USA, a progressive advocacy group, started running ads against Pence and the state after the raid. They and the IVRP say that more than 40,000 black Hoosiers may not be allowed to vote on Nov. 8.Besides that, employees were barred from filming the raid, and the police handcuffed a black employee and denied him his legal right to speak to an attorney.Black voters tend to vote Democratic, and almost every voter suppression tactics are aimed at harming Democratic voting. As longtime GOP consultant Carter Wrenn said, when he effectively threw his party and its suppression tactics to the wolves: Look, if African Americans voted overwhelmingly Republican, they would have kept early voting right where it was. He was speaking of North Carolina trying to end early voting, but this applies to most voter suppression tactics. Pence would know that   he s a conniving old white man who sees the black community as an electoral threat. If they can t register, they can t vote, and if they can t vote, his party is safer.It s so disgustingly simple it makes us want to put our fists through the walls.Of course, Pence s spokesperson called the allegations  false and absurd.  He said: In fact, the Indiana State Police has uncovered strong evidence of voter fraud by Patriot Majority USA. Among Governor Pence s top priorities is ensuring the integrity of the election and that every single Hoosier vote counts. He has full confidence in the Indiana State Police investigation to achieve this goal. Uh huh. Sure. The state police have found exactly ten irregularities so far, and they re mostly missing zip codes or other minor problems, according to Fusion. Ten, and those irregularities show anything but fraud.Pence ought to be ashamed of himself, but he s still Donald Trump s running mate so we all know he s incapable of shame.Featured image by Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images