Jesse Jackson Says His Coalition Has Helped Number of Nonwhite Voters in SC Pass 1 Million

South Carolina now has more than 1 million registered non-white voters, a new milestone touted by the Rev. Jesse Jackson in the week leading up to South Carolina’s Democratic presidential primary on Saturday.

The Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, founded by the Greenville native and former presidential candidate, and several other groups helped to register voters over the last year, Jackson said during a visit to The Greenville News on Monday.

He said the groups had gone over their goals of 20,000 new registrations for college and high school students and 100,000 overall.

There are 3.3 million registered voters in the state, a 6 percent increase or around 200,000 more than 2018’s general election as numbers of registered voters continue to rise in the state.

The organizations worked to register young people — especially high school graduates and college students — and former inmates, said Jackson.

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Jackson said his groups are considering a lawsuit to force national and state Democratic parties to change the primary system and are also are pushing for a constitutional amendment that would guarantee the right to vote.

He said caucuses, in states like Nevada and Iowa, require people’s votes to be too public. Non-demographically representative states like Iowa and New Hampshire also skew the early votes, Jackson said. And Super Tuesday, with 14 states voting, is too wide and too costly for many candidates to fairly compete, Jackson said.

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