ED HENRY (GUEST CO-HOST): Our next guest says voter suppression is simply a myth, that minority turnout actually surged in 2018, and he's got the data to prove it. He's Jason Riley, Wall Street Journal columnist, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and a Fox News contributor. Good to see you, sir.
JASON RILEY (FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR): Morning.
HENRY: We'll get to the data in a second but first of all, it seems to me pretty darn dangerous to be saying Stacey Abrams won, it was stolen. Hillary Clinton claiming “I won, it was stolen.”
RILEY: It's incredibly irresponsible to be out there saying this but this is how Democrats try and motivate their voters. They try and keep them paranoid and angry to get them out to the polls. But I think you're right, Democrats need to learn how to lose an election without playing the race card.
HENRY: They were accusing Donald Trump as a candidate that he wasn't going to accept the results in 2016. It turned out the Democrats seemed to resist since then. Let's look at the Census data that I mentioned, 2018 turnout in the midterms. It was up about 50% for Hispanics and Asians. Up 27%, let's repeat that, up 27% for Black voters. So Jason, quite simply, how can you claim that Black voters were suppressed, say in a state like Georgia when actually Black turnout was up?
RILEY: You can't. And in fact this merely continues a preexisting trend. We've seen an increase in minority voter turnout go up gradually since the 1990s under Bill Clinton. And what's interesting is that this has happened even as more and more states have passed voter I.D. laws and other ways to ensure voter integrity. What we've sign is an increase in minority turnout. And what we saw in the midterms last year was a historic high among minority groups in terms of turnout. When Blacks and other groups are motivated to turn out Ed, they turn out to vote.
HENRY: You think that maybe some Democrats are worried that some of the Blacks and Hispanics who turned out in 2018 and might turn out in 2020, they're turning out but might actually vote Republican?
RILEY: Absolutely. In fact, in 2012, the Black voter turnout rate exceeded the white voter turnout rate even in states with the strictest voter I.D. laws on the books. So like I said, when Blacks are motivated to turn out, when Hispanics are motivated to turn out, they do so. And what these Democratic candidates, that Kamala Harris is complaining about and others are complaining about, simply did not motivate people to turn out in the numbers that they needed in order to win.
