The Executive director of the Missouri Republican Party has called the voter registration drive being conducted in Ferguson “Disgusting”:

Encouraging more participation in the democratic process in a community that feels alienated from political power — hence the demonstrations — seems like an obviously good idea; and one that’s particularly compelling because it’s so simple. Voting is an alternative to protesting in the streets.

And yet, the executive director of the Missouri Republican Party, Matt Wills, denounced the plan.

Mr. Wills told the right-wing website Breitbart: “If that’s not fanning the political flames, I don’t know what is. I think it’s not only disgusting but completely inappropriate.”

On another right-wing site, Red State, Dan McLaughlin also argued that there was something indecent about the registration drive. Ferguson presents an opportunity for “Right and Left” to find “common ground,” he wrote. But “the minute you turn your energies into just another effort to register Democratic voters and fire up the Democratic base in advance of an election,” he argued, “the harder you make it to keep the common ground from vanishing in the fog.”

In case you’re wondering, Mr. Sharpton did not say that the residents of Ferguson should vote for Democrats; he said they should vote, full stop. He didn’t even mention the ideological composition of the area’s governing bodies; though he did mention their racial composition (lopsidedly white in a majority black community). And of course the residents of Ferguson, once registered, will have the ability to vote for anyone they please — not just Democrats.

Your inner Jim Crow is showing, dudes.

Voter registration is not a partisan activity, it is an invocation to civic virtue, so of course Republicans are against it.