Hillary Clinton.Photo: Albert Cara/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Former Secretary of StateHillary Clintonsays that the fight for voting rights isa fight for democracy itself, writing in a new op-ed that each of a slew Republican-backed election laws are “egregious in its own right.”
“We are witnessing a concerted attempt to destabilize the democratic process and delegitimize our multi-racial democracy, carried out in full view of the American people,” Clinton, 73, writes in the op-ed, which was published Wednesday on the progressive outlet Democracy Docket.
According to the progressive-leaning Brennan Center for Justice,at least 17 state legislatureshave enacted new laws that restrict voting access around the country which, as Clinton details in her editorial, amounts to “nearly 400 billsmaking it harder to vote” since the 2020 election.
As the former Democratic nominee for president explains, those laws do everything from “cutting back on early and absentee voting” to “banning giving out food or water to people waiting in line at the polls.”
The result, Clinton argued, is a disproportionate impact on people of color.
“Each of these proposals disproportionately prevents people of color from casting their ballots, and each is egregious in its own right,” Clinton wrote. “(They also pose a question: If your best strategy for winning elections is to block huge swaths of the electorate from voting, what does that say about the strength of your candidates and policies?)”
“It’s heartbreaking and unacceptable that we once again find ourselves fighting the battles of the last two centuries,” Clinton wrote. “Today’s voting restrictions are no different from the Jim Crow past, replacing literacy tests and poll taxes with laws that, as one North Carolina judge put it in 2016, ‘target African Americans with almost surgical precision.’ "
Abrams, speaking about several controversialpieces of legislationon CNN’sState of the Union, said in March that the bills are “racist.
“It is a redux of Jim Crow in a suit and tie,” Abrams told CNN’s Jake Tapper.
Still, the former first lady argued that those measures are not enough, particularly in light of the events of Jan. 6, when a mob of pro-Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol after the former president claimed the election had been “stolen” from him.
“We need to call these attacks on voting what they are: part of a clear attempt to move away from a pluralistic, multi-racial democracy and toward white supremacist authoritarianism,” Clinton wrote.
source: people.com
