Mark Barrett

mbarrett@citizen-times.com

CHARLOTTE - North Carolinians should reject Republicans’ “concerted effort to undermine the right to vote” by showing up at the polls in droves, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said at a campaign rally here Thursday.

Clinton said if elected she would push a universal voter registration system to automatically register people to vote when they turn 18, saying government should be making it easier to vote, not harder.

She also blasted Donald Trump for statements the Republican nominee made during a nationally televised forum Wednesday on national security and foreign policy.

“It was a test, and he failed it,” Clinton said.

Clinton spoke to a midday crowd of more than 750 at Johnson C. Smith University, a private, historically black school on Charlotte’s west side. Her remarks came a few days after the leak of a report commissioned by several progressive groups that found wide skepticism of Clinton among young African-American voters.

Clinton was scheduled to attend a fundraiser at a private home in Charlotte later Thursday.

At the rally, Clinton criticized Gov. Pat McCrory and the Republican-controlled legislature for changes to voting rules a federal court recently struck down.

“The court said the North Carolina law was designed to target African-Americans with almost surgical precision,” she said. “That’s not just happening in North Carolina; it’s happening across America.”

Requiring voter identification was the most noted provision of changes the state General Assembly made to North Carolina’s voting laws after Republicans gained a majority in legislature in 2011. Legislators also shortened the state’s early voting period, changed voter registration rules and altered Election Day procedures for voters who show up at the wrong precinct, all in ways critics and court documents say were designed to reduce African-American turnout.

Many county elections boards, also controlled by the GOP, have argued over what the new hours for early voting should be with some Republican officials pushing for limited locations. Democrats say the GOP seeks to reduce turnout to benefit its candidates.

Republicans say the changes then and now were designed to prevent fraud, not harm black voters.

Clinton urged the audience, which included many Smith students, to fight back against efforts to keep them from the polls.

“What’s the best way to repudiate that kind of underhanded, mean-spirited effort to deprive people of their vote? Get out and vote!” she said.

Clinton said Trump’s remarks at Wednesday’s “commander-in-chief” event showed once again he is unfit to hold that title.

Trump’s willingness to have troops use waterboarding and kill family members of terrorists is contrary to American values and his remarks showed a lack of respect for U.S. troops and the office of president, she said.

Trump said Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin has “been a leader far more than our president has been a leader.”

He said generals serving under President Barack Obama have been “reduced to rubble,” prompting Clinton to complain Thursday that Trump had “trash talked” military leaders.

Trump’s remarks about Putin amounted to him saying he preferred Putin to Obama, Clinton said.

“What would Ronald Reagan say about a Republican nominee who attacks American generals and heaps praise on the Russian president?" she said. "We’ve never seen anything like this.”

Voters “have to realize, as so many Republicans are, that this is a time to put country over party,” Clinton said.

She said America has “never been threatened so much by a single candidate running for president as we have been in this election.”

The head of Trump’s campaign in North Carolina, Jason Simmons, said it was Clinton who had a “dismal performance” at Wednesday’s forum.

“She showed herself completely unfit to serve as president, with her misuse of classified emails on her homebrew server and her pay-to-play scheme where she traded official State Department access for donation to the Clinton Foundation from foreign agents,” Simmons said in a statement.

Donald Trump rallying in Asheville Monday