Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton joined a group of 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls in Selma, Alabama, on March 3 to commemorate the 54th anniversary of the “Bloody Sunday” civil rights demonstration where Alabama state troopers beat peaceful African American demonstrators attempting to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Clinton used the opportunity to express divisive views on race relations, the Trump administration, and her stunning election loss in 2016. She also primed a “voter suppression” narrative to the mostly black audience.
“We are living through a full-fledged crisis in our democracy,” Clinton said, in reference to the Trump administration during a ceremonial breakfast where she was ironically given a 2019 International Unity Award.
Clinton added that “racist and white supremacist views are lifted up in the media and in the White House.”
Later in the day, she told listeners at a service at the Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church that their fellow Americans are actively trying to victimize them.
“I want you to never forget, there is another side in America, and they never give up. They never quit. They are never discouraged. They are motivated every single day to try to pull back rights, to try to suppress rights, to try to prevent people from fulfilling their own God-given potential,” Clinton said.
She also claimed that her 2016 presidential loss was due to people being blocked from voting in Wisconsin due to “the color of their skin.” Clinton famously never visited Wisconsin during her presidential campaign.
“I was the first person who ran for president without the protection of the Voting Rights Act,” Clinton said, adding “it made a difference in Wisconsin where the best studies that have been done said somewhere between 40,000 and 80,000 people were turned away from the polls because of the color of their skin, because of their age, because of whatever excuse could be made up to stop a fellow American citizen from voting.”
In 2011, Wisconsin passed a strict photo voter identification law that Democrats challenged on the grounds that it suppresses minority votes. But in August 2016, months before the general election, a federal appeals court ruled that the law was constitutional as long as the state provides free IDs to those in need, and sufficiently publicizes the requirement.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission also accepts a broad range of identifying documents, including a state driver’s license, ID card or other DMV-issued document, a military or veteran’s ID, student ID, tribal ID, or certificates of naturalization. Voters can also cast a provisional ballot at the polls and retrieve identification up to four days after an election.
Researchers Enrico Cantoni of the University of Bologna and Vincent Pons of Harvard Business School analyzed elections spanning eight years, using a methodology involving 1.3 billion voting observations, and concluded that strict voter ID laws have “no negative effect” on voter registration or voter turnout—either overall or for any specific group, whether defined by race, gender, age, or party affiliation.
Ultimately, the state’s 10 Electoral College votes only padded President Trump’s 304-227 victory over Clinton.
“No, you don’t need that anymore. We don’t need that voting rights stuff. You don’t need to hold states and municipalities accountable,” she said. “What nonsense. Absolute, absurd nonsense. And what was the result? They gutted the Voting Rights Act.”
In truth, the court did not effectively repeal the Voting Rights Act but determined that the original coverage formula for determining which voting jurisdictions are subject to federal oversight, known as pre-clearance, was no longer valid—nearly a half-century later.
According to Hans von Spakovsky, a former FEC commissioner and senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, the Shelby ruling was a sign of “overwhelming success of the Voting Rights Act.”
But the theme of voter suppression still resonated during the 2018 midterms and looks to be a top campaign issue ahead of the 2020 elections.
Clinton singled-out Stacey Abrams on Sunday for narrowly losing her Georgia gubernatorial election to the state’s current Republican Governor, Brian Kemp, despite record overall and minority voting turnout.
Abrams, a Democrat, would have been Georgia’s first African American governor. She didn’t officially end her campaign until 10 days after Nov. 6, and has since sued over the election result alleging systematic voter suppression.
“We know, don’t we, that candidates both black and white lost their races because they have been deprived of the votes they otherwise would have gotten,” Clinton said. “And the clearest example is from next door in Georgia. Stacy Abrams should be the governor leading that state right now.”
Abrams has based her career on voter suppression, and appears to be forging a way forward on the issue to the benefit of the Democratic Party.
Abrams was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 2007 and remained a relatively obscure figure until receiving a funding windfall of $12.5 million in 2016 through two voter registration nonprofits.
In the lead-up to her 2018 election, Abrams organized a statewide voter registration drive known as the New Georgia Project, which also relied on wealthy out-of-state progressive donors.
Regarding 2020, Clinton said, “So we’re looking toward a new presidential election, thank goodness, but it’s not going to make a difference if we don’t bring the lawsuits and win them, right?”
