Hillary Clinton: GOP ‘Doubling Down on Trying to Stop Voters from Voting’

Twice failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton went after Republican state legislatures taking action to secure the integrity of their elections via basic election integrity measures, proclaiming Wednesday that the GOP is actively “doubling down on trying to stop voters from voting.”

“The Republican Party is unwilling to change its policies to appeal to more people. So it’s doubling down on trying to stop voters from voting,” Clinton said in a social media post to her nearly 31 million Twitter followers, referencing a New York Times piece titled, “G.O.P. and Allies Draft ‘Best Practices’ for Restricting Voting”:

The Times piece details actions taken by GOP state legislators, who are working to secure the integrity of their elections state by state, though Democrats, largely, deem basic election integrity measures — such as bans on ballot harvesting and the implementation of voter ID — as discriminatory and fundamentally suppressive.

Per the Times piece:

Party leaders and their conservative allies are planning to export successful statutory language from one state to others, like the text of Alabama’s voter ID law. They are also drafting what they describe as “best practices” principles for completely new legislation, with the impetus often coming from outside groups like the Heritage Foundation.

The actions coincide with the Republican State Leadership Committee’s (RSLC) creation of an election integrity commission, co-chaired by Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill and Michigan state Sen. Ruth Johnson, which seeks to fuel election integrity measures among state legislatures across the country.

As Breitbart News reported in February:

The RSLC said the election integrity commission has already begun sampling legislation from the hundreds of proposals in statehouses across the country, with a focus on proposals that increase voter access and participation while also making it harder for Democrats to cheat by ensuring “security, accountability, and transparency.”

The RSLC provided details on the election integrity efforts, a national coordinated campaign to secure the ballot in every state possible, to Breitbart News ahead of its public release.

…

According to the forthcoming RSLC statement provided to Breitbart News ahead of its public release, the commission will have five key principles of what it is looking to accomplish with these election integrity reform proposals. They include “empowering states,” “ensuring voter roll accuracy,” “securing absentee/mail-in voting,” “increasing transparency for in-person voting,” and “streamlining the canvassing process.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) utilized language similar to Clinton’s during Wednesday’s Senate Rules and Administration Committee hearing on S. 1, or the “For the People Act,” deeming state election laws, particularly those pursued by GOP legislatures, “one of the greatest threats we have to modern democracy in America”:

“Some of these voter suppression laws in Georgia and other Republican states smack of Jim Crow rearing its ugly head once again. It is 160 years since the 13, 14, and 15th amendments abolished slavery, and Jim Crow stills seems to be with us,” Schumer said.

“The laws, their various cousins in Republican state legislatures across the country, are one of the greatest threats we have to modern democracy in America,” he added.

Watch:

Senate Rules and Administration Committee

“The state bills he refers to I believe … had absolutely nothing to do with suppressing the vote,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said at the hearing following Schumer’s remarks. “It’s also noteworthy that this is a solution in search of a problem.”

Watch:

Senate Rules and Administration Committee

“States are not engaging in trying to suppress voters whatsoever,” McConnell added. “This is clearly an effort by one party to rewrite the rules of our political system but even more immediately, it would create an implementation nightmare, as Senator [Roy] Blunt [R-MO] pointed out, that would drown state and local officials who run elections.”