Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle is leading a push for voter ID in Nevada. And it looks like for Angle, the issue is personal: She’s suggesting—without evidence—that Harry Reid “stole” their Senate contest through voter fraud.
Asked in a radio interview Thursday whether voter fraud was a factor in her 2010 loss to the Senate leader, Angle said: “I think it’s an element in every election across the United States.”
She continued: “I’ve been traveling and I have done quite a bit of it and they asked me two questions. One is, ‘What are you doing now?’ And the other is, ‘Did Harry Reid steal the election?’”
Not that Angle was saying she knows for sure. “It is more of a rhetorical question,” she said, before adding: “We know that ballots have been cast for dead people or for people in prison.”
Though Angle lost to Reid by 41,000 votes, this isn’t the first time that she’s raised the idea that he or his allies cheated her out of a Senate seat. In 2011, she pointed to Republican claims that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which backed Reid, had manipulated voting machines to give him imaginary votes. An election official called the charge “patently false.” She later said she planned to make a documentary about voter fraud.
Even if the accusation against Reid and the SEIU were true, a voter ID law would have done nothing to stop the scheme. But that’s not deterring Angle. She’s working to gather signatures to get a proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot for November, which would instate a voter ID requirement for the state. She needs 100,000 signatures from registered Nevada voters by mid-June. Tea Party activists in California are pursuing a similar effort in that state. And in Missouri, GOP lawmakers look likely to get a voter Id constitutional amendment before voters this November, too. Angle gained national attention during her race against Reid when she mused about conservatives using “Second Amendment remedies” to advance the cause. She also said she believes Social Security should be “transitioned out.”
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