A Professor Looked At 15 Years' Worth Of Information. Then A Designer Packed It Into 1 Punchy GIF.
A law professor looked at "credible allegations" of voter fraud in the U.S. from 2000 to 2014. Here's what he found in one mesmerizing GIF.
GIF by Think Progress.
Conservative politicians across the U.S. are using voter fraud as a scapegoat to pass laws — like voter ID requirements or reduced early voting — that are making it harder for certain constituents to cast their ballots. Such laws were once considered to be wholly unconstitutional.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), which basically banned racism at the polls, is the most successful civil rights law ever enacted by the U.S. Congress. But in 2013, the Supreme Court — specifically Justices Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito — undid a VRA provision that cleared barriers to voting in areas where minority voters were heavily silenced at the polls.
The decision was a shameful exercise in either missing the point (which is really hard to believe) or simply not giving a shit about the consequences. Their message: Times have changed! Just look at all these black people and their votes!
Not all of them agreed. Justice Ginsburg whipped her opposition with a 37-page dissent endorsed by Justices Sotomayor, Breyer, and Kagan. She reminded them that Congress (with good reason and strong bipartisan support) had already decided the VRA should stay intact and in full force for the time being.
Then she said they were wrong. Straight up. "Egregiously" at that.
The majority decision even acknowledges voter discrimination is still a problem:
To which Ginsburg responded with this:
Instead of ruling in a way that might actually help to eliminate that discrimination, those five justices thought it best to reduce what protections minority voters do have.
And these headlines are just a sampling of what's happened since:
- One Year After Shelby Decision, States Have Moved to Restrict Voter Access
- Texas, North Carolina Push Back on Voter Rights
- North Carolina Approves the Nation's Most Restrictive Voter Suppression Law
- Houstonians Without Voter ID Are Mostly Black and Poor
- Baton Rouge Voter Discrimination Case Heads to Trial in Federal Court
- Wisconsin Asks Court to OK Voter ID for 2014 Election
- Kansas Voting Law Suppresses Turnout
- Why Mississippi's Voter ID Law Hurts the Poor
- ID Law Blocks 93-Year-Old Voter in Alabama
- Ohio GOP Resurrects Voter Suppression Efforts
- Florida Republicans Admit Voter Suppression Was the Goal of New Election Laws
Learn more:



A Generation Jones teenager poses in her room.Image via Wikmedia Commons
An office kitchen.via
An angry man eating spaghetti.via 
Gif of baby being baptized
Woman gives toddler a bath Canva


An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
- YouTube youtube.com
Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.