Ted Yoho Comments on African-American Voters-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
Congressman Ted Yoho, a Republican from Florida, said that African-Americans should only be given a 3/5 vote.
The Truth:
A fake news website is behind the bogus Ted Yoho quote about African-American voters.
The fake news website Newslo published a report headlined, “Florida Representative Ted Yoho Says African-Americans Should Only be Given 3/5 of a Vote” in May 2014. The report quoted Ted Yoho as saying:
“I can’t remember which founding father said it, but he said, the ability to vote, but vote uninformed, is as tragic or as dangerous as having a loaded gun and not know how to use it,” said Yoho, responding to an audience member who claimed that absentee voting was destroying elections. “Obviously anyone who doesn’t own their own property is going to be pretty clueless when it comes to voting.”
Like most fake news stories that go viral, however, this one holds a sliver of truth. Ted Yoho drew unwanted headlines in May 2012 after a video surfaced of him campaigning for the congressional seat that he went on to win.
In the video, Yoho said, “I’ve had some radical ideas about voting and it’s probably not a good time to tell them, but you used to have to be a property owner to vote.”
The comment was controversial in its own right, but Ted Yoho never said in the campaign stump speech that African-American voters should be given a 3/5 vote.
The fake news story didn’t gain a lot of traction at the time it was published. However, the 3/5 voter claim was made into a meme that was widely shared on social media. Taken out of context, many believed that the comment was true — but it’s not.