MSNBC’s Joy Reid, who was swift to condemn Republican concerns of voter fraud, was equally as fast at accusing them of plotting to steal the election. Reid’s concern centered on a computer system called CrossCheck which was developed to find duplicate names on the voter rolls so they can be removed. But Reid and her guest Rolling Stone writer Greg Palast, who brought the issue to her attention, accuse the system of targeting minorities. “The system disproportionality targets voters of color who are likely to have common surnames, like Washington or Hernandez,” Reid stated.

According to a quote read by Reid from the creator of the system Kris Kobach, who is the Republican Secretary of State of Kansas, “It is a computer that simply identified matching names, dates of birth, and last four digits of social security numbers.” But that didn’t stop Reid and Palast from spreading speculation and fear. “Just a computer program? It is Jim Crow in cyber space but instead of using white sheets, they are using spreadsheets,” exclaimed Palast.

After pointing to a single case of the system messing up, Palast admitted the blatantly obvious, “Yes, it is not discriminatory, it is just matching first and last names.” But from there, Palast seemed to go off the deep end by bizarrely claiming that people with similar names were somehow absent from the Republican Party. “That means common names. That means Hernandez, Jackson, Wong. That means Democrats! You are kidding me,” he rambled on.

But what about surnames such as Smith, Johnson, Irish surnames, Jewish surnames, or the large groups of Europeans whose last names were changed when they immigrated to the US?

“Can you tell us where, what states that you’ve been able to determine this Kobach program is actually being used in,” inquired a concerned Reid. And as would be expected, Palast’s concern was with Republican state leaders:

Well basically, about 28 Republican-controlled voting states. In other words where they have control of the secretary of state. Dangerously in the swing state of Ohio, where the Republican— very partisan Republican chief, he is like the Katherine Harris of Ohio. He’s just burning straight through the voter registrations, burning through black names, removing them from the voter rolls in Ohio. You see it in North Carolina, the other big swing state. And Nevada, we have to look out for, too. The Republicans control that.

Reid implored her viewers to check their voter registration status to make sure they weren’t a victim of the program.

From there, Reid’s concern moved to the current threat posed by the recent hackings by Russian operatives into state voter registration systems. Reid sought Palast’s expertise on that topic as well, and his concern was once again the boogiemen Republicans. “Well, if the Russians from Moscow could get into the machines, imagine the secretary of state— these partisan secretaries of state that we have in charge in Ohio, North Carolina, and Arizona,” he warned, “Can they get into their own machines? Oh, yeah. So we have to be concerned.”

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