In
a speech in Texas yesterday, Hillary Clinton called for automatic voting registration and then spoke some truths about un-American Republican voter suppression actions:
Clinton told an audience at the
historically black Texas Southern University that she supports the
concept of signing every American up to vote as soon as they're eligible
at age 18, unless they specifically opt out. She called for expanded
access to polling places, keeping them open for at least 20 days and
offering voting hours on evenings and weekends.
For
the first time in her campaign, she attacked her likely opponents by
name as she laid into four GOP governors -- Texas's Rick Perry,
Wisconsin's Scott Walker, Florida's Jeb Bush and New Jersey's Chris
Christie -- telling them to "stop fear-mongering about a phantom
epidemic of voter fraud."
"All of
these problems voting just didn't happen by accident," she said. "And it
is just wrong -- it's wrong -- to try to prevent, undermine and inhibit
Americans' right to vote." [snip]
The former secretary of state's move to
put voter access front and center in the 2016 presidential campaign
highlights a contrast with laws implemented by GOP-controlled
legislatures in states like North Carolina, Texas, Wisconsin and Florida
that cut down on early voting times and tighten voter identification
rules.
The
Supreme Court also ruled in 2013 that a key aspect of President Lyndon
Johnson's Voting Rights Act of 1965 is no longer constitutional.
"What
is happening is a sweeping effort to disempower and disenfranchise
people of color, poor people and young people from one end of our
country to the other," Clinton said. [snip]
Her complaints about the Republican
governors: Perry signed a law that courts later ruled intentionally
discriminated against minority voters; Walker signed one that made
voting more difficult for college students; Christie rejected an
expansion of early voting; and Bush oversaw a purge of the state's voter
rolls.
And she attacked the nation's
high court for its 2013 ruling on the Voting Rights Act as well as its
2010 decision on campaign finance laws.
"We
need a Supreme Court who cares more about the right to vote of a person
than the right to buy an election of a corporation," Clinton said. (our emphasis)
This should resonate with every fair-minded American who believes in one-person, one-vote democracy. The 2016 election will be about many important issues, but none are more important than safeguarding what's left of our democracy from the oligarchs, racists and authoritarians on the right.
