On Saturday, Hillary Clinton released a statement on the 51st Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act was signed by President Lyndon Johnson on August 6, 1965. The act guaranteed the right to vote to all American citizens regardless of race. However, in 2013, the Supreme Court gutted the act saying that it is no longer necessary given the current climate. Many have disagreed with the Court’s decision including Clinton, and in her statement, Clinton said that as president she would continue to fight to ensure universal voting rights. A copy of her statement is below.
“Fifty-one years after the Voting Rights Act was signed into law, Americans are now facing the most systematic effort to curtail those rights since the era of Jim Crow. Make no mistake, new voter restriction laws in seventeen states have replaced poll taxes and literacy tests as a thinly veiled attempt to achieve an old objective: disenfranchising African Americans, Latinos, low-income people, young people, and people with disabilities.
But we are fighting back. Last week, a court struck down North Carolina’s voter ID requirement, saying it was designed to ‘target African Americans with almost surgical precision.’ Similar restrictions have recently been overturned in Wisconsin, Texas, Michigan, North Dakota, and Kansas after courts found they were intended to discriminate as well.
This November, the notion that every American has a voice in shaping our future is at stake. Donald Trump supports discriminatory voting restrictions — and actually claims that without them in place, the results of American elections should be questioned. It’s a dangerous attempt to undermine the legitimacy of our democracy.
I have a very different view. I believe America is stronger when we expand access to the ballot box, not restrict it. That’s why I’ll fight to repair the Voting Rights Act, expand early voting, and introduce universal, automatic voter registration.
Upon signing the Voting Rights Act in 1965, President Johnson said the right to vote ‘is one which no American, true to our principles, can deny.’
He was right.”
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News Source: The White House
Hillary Clinton Speeches 