Senator Doug Jones (D-AL) continued his push for the national Democratic Party’s narrative on voter suppression, claiming Thursday, “In the last few years we’ve seen a whole segment of our population that have had their voting rights restricted.”

Secretary of State John Merrill has challenged Jones and others making similar claims to provide objective evidence to back them up. And, in stark contrast to their silence, Merrill has provided statistics of his own to substantiate his position that Jones’ assertions have “absolutely no validity.”

Nonetheless, in an interview with WHNT regarding his support of the “For the People Act,” Jones again doubled down on recent dubious claims he made on the subject, including his most memorable line that Republicans “do not want African-Americans and other minorities to vote.“

“In the last few years we’ve seen a whole segment of our population that have had their voting rights restricted,” Jones told WHNT without offering any facts or examples to back up his claims. “It’s harder to get to the polls, it’s harder to vote, it’s harder to register.”

Merrill has previously told Yellowhammer News, “[Sen. Jones is] entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts. And the empirical data does not back [him] up.”

The secretary of state advised, as of earlier this month, that since Merrill took office in January 2014, Alabama has registered over 1.2 million new voters. The state now has a constantly-growing record of registered voters, approaching the 3.5 million milestone.

Merrill emphasized, “We’ve broken every record in the history of the state for voter registration and voter participation. 96 percent of all eligible African-Americans in the state of Alabama are registered to vote.”

Sean Ross is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn