Biden: 'Republicans Have Changed the Law So You Get Arrested If You Do Vote'

At a Democratic fundraiser for Washington senator Maria Cantwell in the Seattle Westin hotel last night, Vice President Joe Biden said that "Republicans have changed the law so you get arrested if you do vote," according to a pool report. Biden, the pool report states, was "apparently joking."

 But the vice president pointed to states like Pennsylvania and Ohio to back up his point.

Here's the context, via the pool report: 

Recalling a story that Cantwell had told as she was introducing him about crying as a little girl because she thought one of her neighbors had said she wasn't going to vote and Cantwell feared she would be arrested, Biden said it wasn't much different today. "Republicans have changed the law so you get arrested if you do vote," he said, apparently joking. He cited efforts in Pennsylvania, Ohio and elsewhere "to essentially try to intimidate people, taking people off the roles."

"This is not your father's Republican Party," he said. 

Additionally, according to the pool report, Biden criticized Republican presumptive presidential candidate Mitt Romney by saying that he's worse than former President George W. Bush. 

Biden said Romney's economic policies were, "to paraphrase Bill Clinton, 'George Bush on steroids.'"

He criticized Romney's desire to extend the Bush tax cuts for all Americans and said the Republican Party had changed.

"No more compassionate conservatism, no more health care for everyone … They're saying exactly what they believe, and they mean it," he said.

Told a story about seeing Boston Mayor Kevin White at a press conference on television in 1973 while in Masschusetts. "Look, don't compare me to the Almighty,  compare me to the alternative," White said.

Biden asked voters to do the same for him and President Obama.