"The clear and present danger is Trump," says Black Votes Matter Fund co-founder Cliff Albright. This election, Albright says, is "very critical for the Black community because we are being directly targeted."
For more than a century, Jim Crow laws kept Black people from voting, a constitutional right awarded in 1870. In the 2024 presidential election, history has begun to repeat itself, say community leaders.
"People don't understand that history can go backwards," Cliff Albright, a co-founder of Black Voters Matter, tells Inside Edition Digital.
This election year presents a dire situation for Black voters, as white Christian nationalism permeates "every aspect" of life and an ever-growing series of state laws enact voting restrictions that disproportionately affect Democrats, the preferred party of Black voters, Albright says.
His group, which is now knee-deep in a "We Fight Back" campaign to register and rally Black voters, is in a precarious position, he says.
They are pressing Black people to vote this year, while trying not to scare people half to death.
"We have to be aware and sound the alarm without making people so intimidated and frustrated that they don't want to participate," he says.
There are many things to fear in the current political climate, say Albright and many other minority advocates.
"The clear and present danger is Trump," Albright says. "But it's not the only danger. This Congress is not really a Congress. The Republican Party isn't just a party, it's a very big hate group."
He points to the debacle of Donald Trump refusing to concede he was defeated in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election and to Trump's telling Georgia officials he wanted them to find the exact number of votes he needed to win that state, as the foundation on which current voting restrictions were built.
Some 20 states have passed laws since then to curb voting rights, he says.
In Florida, a series of laws supported by conservative Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis were passed that placed burdens on organizations that did voter-registration drives in Black communities, restricted the use of ballot drop boxes in locations most useful to Black people, and banned "line warming,” the practice of providing food and drink to people waiting in voting lines, which were more common in Black precincts.
In overturning those laws in 2022, Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker wrote, “At some point, when the Florida Legislature passes law after law disproportionately burdening Black voters, this court can no longer accept that the effect is incidental ... Florida has repeatedly sought to make voting tougher for Black voters because of their propensity to favor Democratic candidates.”
States that passed such laws cited voter fraud as the impetus. But several government voting surveys and multiple studies by voting advocacy groups found instances of fraud were rare, and usually occurred through human error such as voting in the wrong district or accidentally voting twice.
Critics say Georgia did much the same as Florida, passing several voter restriction laws that increased voter identification requirements for absentee ballots, limited the use of drop boxes and expanded the Legislature's power over elections.
In the United States, county officials count votes and control elections.
Georgia also banned giving water or food to voters in line to cast a ballot — something that turned up in this month's premiere of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," in which series star Larry David is arrested after giving a bottle of water to someone he knows, who is standing in line to vote.
“Sir, in the navy blazer, put your hands in the air,” a police officer says to David. “You’re under arrest for violation of the Election Integrity Act. It is illegal for anyone in the state of Georgia to provide food or water to voters in line in the polls.”
Albright saw that premiere and was momentarily amused, he says.
"Now it's funny when it's on 'Curb Your Enthusiasm.' Not so much when it's reality in Georgia," he says.
The effort to limit Black votes is multi-faceted, he says.
It relies on fear, intimidation and changing the election system, he says.
If a mistake is going to get you arrested, as it did for a Black woman in Tennessee who was arrested and sentenced to six years in prison for voter fraud, why would a person of color want to risk being arrested, Albright asks.
Pamela Moses had convictions on her criminal record. She didn't know that prohibited her from voting in Tennessee for the rest of her life, she told officials. She had been voting for years, she said, when Shelby County authorities arrested her in 2022.
Her conviction was ultimately overturned, and the district attorney declined to refile the case.
An example of trying to change the election system, Albright says, recently occurred in Arizona, where a state senator and avid Trump supporter introduced a bill that would give the legislature the right to overturn election results.
State Sen. Anthony Kern, who endorsed Trump's false claim of winning the 2020 presidential election, submitted the measure in January. The proposed law would give state lawmakers the power to solely appoint the presidential electors, regardless of which candidate received the most votes.
Arizona electors vote according to the popular vote to decide who’s awarded the state’s 11 presidential electors. Presidential candidates usually need at least 270 Electoral College votes to win.
If passed, the proposed Arizona legislation would also need to be approved by voters.
Such efforts by politicians, Albright says, fly in the face of democracy and the Constitution.
"It's the opposite of trying to do what they're supposed to do, which is expand the vote," he says.
Which is what Black Voters Matter is all about, he says.
"People don't understand what Reconstruction really was," he says, referring to the period after the Civil War when newly freed enslaved people were supposed to be assimilated into every aspect of America life.
It failed miserably in the South.
"There were already Black men voting. They were serving in Congress," Albright says. "It was all undone. It was undone violently. And it shoved us into 70 years of voting darkness and Jim Crow laws."
Such laws demanded Black voters pay a toll tax, or recite on demand arcane sections of a state's constitution before before being allowed to cast a ballot, or look at a jar of jellybeans and count how many beans were inside. It was an era scarred by lynchings, beatings and the untold suffering of Black people who dared to vote.
And what Albright sees in this election are "shades and echoes of Jim Crow laws," he says.
