FACT CHECK: Politifact Gives Hillary Clinton ‘Pants on Fire’ Rating on Part of Recent Speech

On September 17th, failed presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was the keynote speaker of ‘In Defense of American Democracy’, an event held by the ‘Albert Shanker Institute’. In her speech, Hillary Clinton started back on her ad nauseam lamenting of why she believes she lost the 2016 election to President Donald Trump. As usual, she does not place the blame where it belongs, squarely on the fact that President Trump campaigned in and won the swing states he needed to for an electoral landslide, in tandem with a message aimed at ‘the forgotten man and woman‘. From Politifact: Clinton said on the 17th:

“Experts estimate that anywhere from 27,000 to 200,000 Wisconsin citizen voters, predominantly in Milwaukee, were turned away from the polls,” Clinton said. “That’s a lot of potential voters. They showed up, but maybe they didn’t have the correct form of identification. Maybe the name on their driver’s license included a middle name or an initial that wasn’t on their voter registration. But officials made every excuse in the book to prevent certain people from voting in that election.”

That’s a lot of people to be “turned away” from polling places.

According to Politifact, Clinton’s team didn’t respond to their request for evidence to back her claim. Politifact then goes on to rip her theory of ‘27,000 and 200,000 apart:

Even the low end of that range, if true, could have made a huge difference. Clinton lost Wisconsin by about 22,000 votes out of about 2.8 million cast. Wisconsin flipped to the Republican side — a key reason Trump won the election.

A May 2017 report commissioned by Priorities USA Action, a political action committee that supported Clinton and Barack Obama, looked at changes in voter turnout and connected them to changes in voter ID law. They said turnout increased by 1.3% from 2012 to 2016 in states with no change to voter ID laws, but dropped in Wisconsin by 3.3%.

If Wisconsin’s turnout had instead risen by 1.3%, Priorities USA estimated that would generate 200,000 more votes. The analysis called these the “theoretical 200,000 lost voters.”

But that’s very different than tallying specific people “turned away” from the polls, as Clinton claimed.

Politifact goes on to explain their debunking claim in much more thorough details here, and at the end of their story they rate her claim (in addition to some past fact checks on her) ‘Pants on Fire’. Ironic, for the ‘pantsuit aficionado’. It’s especially ironic that she doesn’t like mentioning the fact that she lacked an actual ground game in the state of Wisconsin.

A short video from the speech can be seen from the Washington Examiner later in the article. The event the speech was at was an even in D.C. focused on ‘civic engagement and voter rights and voter suppression’.

From the Albert Shanker Institute’s website:

This all-day event, held at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., was organized by the Albert Shanker Institute, the American Federation of Teachers, and Onward Together, the organization founded and led by Hillary Clinton.

In America today, the norms and institutions that provide the foundation of democracy are under assault. Self-government by “we the people” is demanding, requiring a degree of mutual respect, civility and understanding that is little in evidence today. We also believe that citizen engagement, at every level, is both possible and central to rebuilding a strong and vibrant democracy. Thus, the conference will draw together intellectuals and activists to examine and explore different dimensions of the current crisis, with a particular focus on Civic Engagement and Voter Rights and Voter Suppression.

PROGRAM

INTRODUCTION: Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers, Albert Shanker Institute

OPENING KEYNOTE
The Honorable Hillary Rodham Clinton, former U.S. Secretary of State

UPDATED: 2:55 PM: You can see the clip referenced by Politifact below.

WATCH: