Expanding voting rights to those who aren’t heads of households was a “grave mistake,” a GOP precinct chairman from Davis County wrote in a Sunday morning Facebook post.
“The more I study history the more I think giving voting rights to others not head of household has been a grave mistake!” Casey Fisher posted on Facebook Sunday morning.
Fisher did not respond to a request for comment Monday evening.
Fisher’s responsibility as a precinct chairman includes overseeing Republican caucuses in his district. The chairwoman of the Davis County GOP, Teena Horlacher, said people misunderstood the sentiment of Fisher’s post.
Horlacher said she had talked with Fisher about the post, and he didn’t mean it the way it came across.
“The sentiment was along the lines of what our Founding Fathers believed in. Not necessarily that men only have the vote, that was not necessarily what he was saying,” she said.
“I certainly don’t agree with that sentiment,” she added.
She declined to expound on what he meant by the post, saying she didn’t want to put words in his mouth.
“He’s not trying to say that only men should vote, that’s not what he’s saying,” she said. “And that’s as far as I’m going to go.”
Fisher has since deleted the post and his Facebook page.
“Casey has been completely harassed today,” she said. “He has been inundated with mean emails, mean comments, mean phone calls. I mean, seriously. He’s quite astounded [by] the repercussions of all of this.”
Rob Anderson, the chairman of the Utah Republican Party, confirmed that Fisher won’t face any official consequences.
Anderson declined to comment on the post, but denounced it in a Sunday evening tweet, saying it “disparages voter participation.”
“This is a perfect example that the Constitution, while divinely inspired, has been improved via amendments that made voter equality a right of America’s citizenry,” he continued.
Salt Lake County Republican Chairman Jake Parkinson called Fisher’s comment “extremely disappointing and disheartening. There’s no excuse for a statement like that to come from anyone in party leadership.”
He said it was “terrible” and “the opposite of what we stand for in the Republican Party.”
Fisher should be held accountable and then forgiven, the same as others who have written regrettable posts on social media, Parkinson said.
He had called for people to forgive Democrat Kathie Allen when she tweeted ”bigoted things” about Utah County voters — that they only cared if a candidate was Mormon and Republican — after losing the election for the 3rd Congressional District seat, he added.
Fisher deserved the same compassion, he said.
Allen apologized within hours of her post. Fisher has made no public apologies or other public statements since removing his post.
Horlacher didn’t see how the post was newsworthy, she said, adding that she thought it was being used as “political gunfire.”
“I know Casey,” she said. “He’s a really good guy. I think he just put something out there without thinking about what it looked like.”
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