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Donald Trump proclaimed several times during the 2016 presidential campaign that he would do well with “The Blacks,” but if an overwhelming number of African-Americans were inclined to cast their ballots for him, the Republican Party would have probably barred them anyway as a result of their commitment to suppressing the vote.

The GOP’s efforts to suppress the Black vote is evident in early voting results in states with new laws. Roland Martin explained on Tuesday’s edition of NewsOne Now that early Black votes in North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida are down compared to 2012.

Martin told his panel of guests, “We cannot deny in Ohio they only allowed one early voting location in each county,” and called Republican state legislators’ voter suppression efforts “an abomination.”

Republicans claim they are interested in appealing to minority voters, but Martin reminded his panel: “Republicans will never be able to get significant Black support as long as voter suppression is on the table. The GOP keeps playing these games and we’re seeing it again in North Carolina, in Georgia, in Pennsylvania, in Florida.”

Martin asked, “When are they going to wise up and stop ticking off Black folks?”

NewsOne Now panelist Randa Fahmy, the former Associate Deputy Secretary of Energy, responded by insisting massive voter fraud is going on around the country, a claim that has not proven to be true. According to Martin, out of more than a billion votes cast in the last decade, there have only been 31 cases of voter fraud.

Corey Dade, Senior Director of Burson-Marsteller, argued we should not “legislate on a statistical meaningless set of things that happened.”

He later added, “Once the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, then you saw a huge influx of states deciding to take that cue and start restricting votes…The fact that we’re still here talking about it shows that the Republican Party is still invested in it.”

Watch Roland Martin and the NewsOne Now panel discuss the Republican Party’s ongoing efforts to suppress the African-American vote in the video clip above.

PHOTO CREDIT: Getty

Watch NewsOne Now with Roland Martin, in its new time slot on TV One.

SEE ALSO:

NAACP Launches Massive Voter Protection Initiative