“Hillary Clinton, Voting Rights and the 2016 Election”
Coatesville's Fifth Ward is 78.22 Democratic and 11.19 Republican. So why did about 8 Republican Attorneys and Skipp Brion Chairman of the Chester County Republican Party spend so much time at Coatesville's Fifth Ward on Election Day in November of 2004?
I can still see and hear an elderly black woman walking away from Coatesville’s 5th Ward saying “They won't let me vote."
“Early on the General Election Day of 2004 several Republican attorneys from Spring City showed up outside of Coatesville's Fifth Ward (precinct 120). When the polls opened they went inside and I saw elderly black women coming out of the polls saying, "They won't let me vote."
When the Democratic attorney was inside the polling place everything was peaceful. When the Democratic attorney took a break, again people were walking out saying they won't let me vote.
The effect of all that Republican muscle in Coatesville's Fifth Ward was stopping long time voters from voting.
I can't understand why they brought in lawyers from Spring City and why CCRC Chairman Skippy Brion was screaming at a Democratic poll watcher inside the polling place in front of voters but I don't have the mind of a Republican.
But I do think that if the Republicans persisted in stopping long time voters from voting there would have been violent incidents at the Fifth Ward.
"A basic fact often gets lost in the propaganda that swirls around voting laws in this country: between one-quarter and one-third of all eligible voters — more than 50 million Americans — are not registered.
That alarming statistic is the backdrop to efforts by Republicans in recent years to pass state laws that restrict ballot access, a recent Democratic campaign to push back against those laws, and a bold set of proposals that Hillary Rodham Clinton laid out Thursday afternoon in a speech at Texas Southern University, a historically black college in Houston.
In addition to pushing needed and long-overdue reforms, the speech highlighted the yawning gulf on voting rights between Mrs. Clinton and the Republican candidates for the White House, many of whom have been cynically committed to making voting harder for the most vulnerable citizens. “What part of democracy are they afraid of?” Mrs. Clinton asked.
Most significantly, Mrs. Clinton called for universal and automatic voter registration, which would register every American citizen at 18. This would be a transformative step toward modernizing the nation’s archaic, error-filled approach to registering voters."
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