FactChecking Clinton’s Voter Suppression Claims
In remarks in Alabama, Hillary Clinton took aim at state laws that she said disenfranchise minority voters. But she went too far in a couple of instances when discussing the impact of Wisconsin and Georgia laws in the 2016 election, when she ran for president:
- Clinton said the “best studies” show that “somewhere between 40[000] and 80,000 people were turned away from the polls” in Wisconsin because of the state’s voter ID law. Her office provided us with reports that did not support the figures she cited, and we could find no credible statewide estimate.
- Clinton falsely claimed that “there were fewer voters registered in Georgia [in 2016] than then there had been those prior four years” in 2012. In fact, there were nearly 571,000 more registered voters in the 2016 election, state records show.
The former Democratic presidential nominee made her remarks on March 3 at the annual “Bloody Sunday” commemorative service, which was held at the Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Selma, Alabama.
In 2016, Clinton won by a wide margin, but lost and the presidency to Donald Trump. She lost the popular vote by a combined in three Rust-Belt states that President Barack Obama had won in and — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — costing her 46 electoral
