No racism here folks, move along.

Hours before a failed effort by Democrats to pass a voting rights bill in the Senate, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was asked in a news conference on Wednesday for his message to voters worried about access to the polls during the midterm elections.

Mr. McConnell described those worries as a ginned-up controversy, and misleadingly cited data on voter turnout.

“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,” he responded.

Note that he thinks African Americans are not Americans.

Leaving that aside however – come on. The issue is future elections, not past ones. The Republicans have been busily making it harder for African Americans to vote ever since the Shelby ruling and especially ever since Trump. There are new obstacles that won’t be in the statistics yet.

[H]igh voter turnout and perceptions that voting was easy in past elections do not prove that concerns about voting access in future elections are “misplaced,” as Mr. McConnell suggested. At least 19 states passed laws in 2021 restricting voting access. Georgia’s efforts in particular may have an outsize impact on Black voters.

What I’m saying. There are new restrictions. McConnell is a very bad man.