Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is now explaining his remark last Wednesday in which he compared "African-American voters" to "Americans" after it received heavy criticism.
Congressional Democrats argued that he was separating Black people from the rest of the country. His office said he was referring to the voter turnout rates among the electorate.
"This is 2022 and being American is not synonymous with looking or thinking like you," Virginia Rep. Donald McEachin said in a statement to McConnell on Thursday.
The 79-year-old was answering a question about voting access and possible concerns from non-white voters when he made the remark.
"Well, the concern is misplaced, because if you look at the statistics, African-American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans. [In] a recent survey, 94 percent of Americans thought it was easy to vote. This is not a problem," McConnell said. "Turnout is up. Biggest turnout since 1900. It's simply— they're being sold a bill of goods to support a Democratic effort to federalize elections. … This goes back 20 years, the excuses change from time to time."
"Please take 19 seconds to watch this video to understand why we have to fight for voting rights for ALL Americans, and why we have to stop the xenophobia, bigotry, racism, and partisanship that assumes only some people are American." California Rep. Judy Chu said in response on Twitter.
McConnell issued a statement through a spokesperson after his remark became controversial.
"I have consistently pointed to the record-high turnout for all voters in the 2020 election, including African-Americans," McConnell said.
McConnell told reporters in Kentucky later in the week that he should have said "all Americans" and added that it was an "inadvertent omission," according to CNN.
"I've never been accused of this kind of thing before. It's hurtful, it's offensive and it's total nonsense," McConnell said.
The New York Times reported that the gap between eligible Black voters and white voters was 4.8 percentage points in the 2016 election and 7 percentage points in the 2020 election.
"There's very little tangible evidence of this whole voter-suppression nonsense that the Democrats are promoting," McConnell said in 2020. "My prediction is African-American voters will turn out in as large a percentage as whites, if not more so, all across the country."
At least 19 states passed laws in 2021 to restrict voting access.
Overall, the 2020 election had the highest voter turnout in more than a century.
“More people were voting in 2020 because more people were interested in voting. That is not a measure of how many were impacted because of voting restrictions,” said Wendy Weiser, the director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “It can’t be that we are satisfied with disenfranchising 10 percent of the population because 60 percent of the population showed up.”
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