Hillary Clinton Wants to Change the Way We Vote

GOP is trying to disenfranchise millions, she says
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 5, 2015 3:13 AM CDT
Clinton: Register Voters Automatically at 18
Hillary Clinton delivers a speech at Texas Southern University in Houston yesterday.   (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan)

Hillary Clinton says she wants to make voting easier and that Republicans—especially Jeb Bush, Rick Perry, Chris Christie, and Scott Walker—have been doing their best to make it harder. In a speech in Houston yesterday, she called for sweeping moves to expand voting access, including 20 days of early voting and automatic registration when eligible voters turn 18, the Hill reports. She accused the GOP of "fear-mongering about a phantom epidemic of election fraud" as part of a systematic campaign to prevent millions of people—especially minority, young, and low-income voters—from going to the polls and asked Republicans why they were "so scared of letting citizens have their say."

Automatic voter registration happens in most major democracies, but a quarter of eligible Americans aren't registered—and since many of them are from Democratic-leaning groups, there has been little bipartisan support for bringing in automatic registration, the Los Angeles Times reports. In her speech yesterday, Clinton slammed the 2013 Supreme Court decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act and said she had been defending voting rights for decades, pointing to her work registering voters in Texas for George McGovern's campaign in 1972, the Wall Street Journal reports. (More Hillary Clinton stories.)

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