Heidi Heitkamp on Ad Discouraging Hunters From Voting: “It Is Really Important People Understand the Consequences of Voting”

Yesterday a story I wrote about Facebook ads, paid for by the North Dakota Democratic Party, telling hunters they “may not want to vote” in the election this year lest they lose their licenses in other states.

After my post on the subject got picked up by national media outlets the Democrats took the ads down for a while, only to put them back up. As I write this, according to Facebook’s database, the ads are active again.

Anyway, yesterday Heitkamp was asked about the ads, and she defended them. “It is really important people understand the consequences of voting,” she said in response to a question about them.

Heitkamp’s defense the ad as though it were a sort of public service announcement. Some service Democrats are doing, warning hunters that they may lose their resident hunting licenses in other states if they vote as residents of North Dakota.

But c’mon. How many people does that actually apply to? Are we really to believe that Democrats see such a large number of voting-age North Dakotans who obtained a resident license in another state and then moved to North Dakota in time to qualify as a resident to move here that they have to run ads informing them that their vote may cost them that license?

Perhaps we should apply Occam’s Razor to this situation and opt for a simpler explanation. Hunters are a demographic that, while not entirely right-of-center, certainly trends in that direction, and Democrats would rather right-of-center voters not cast ballots.

However Heitkamp and Democrats want to dress this up, it’s voter suppression. Calculated, paid-for voter suppression at a time when they’re accusing Republicans of suppressing Native American votes with voter ID laws Democrats had little to say about until it became political advantageous to do so.