Joe Biden plans to use a speech in Georgia on Tuesday to support changing the Senate’s obstructionist rules to allow action on voting rights legislation, calling it a time to choose “democracy over autocracy.” But some civil rights activists, who claim to be more interested in action than speeches, say they plan to stay away.
With Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer setting Martin Luther King Jr.Day as the deadline to pass ballot legislation or consider revising the rules, Biden is expected to evoke memories of the riot on the US Capitol. The US did a year ago by aligning itself more strongly. with the effort
Biden plans to tell his audience: “The next few days, when these bills come to a vote, they will mark a turning point in this nation.”
“Will we choose democracy over autocracy, light over shadow, justice over injustice? I know where I am standing. I will not give up. I will not flinch ”, he will say, according to prepared comments. “I will defend your right to vote and our democracy against all foreign and national enemies. So the question is: where will the institution of the United States Senate be located?
A White House official said Biden would express support for changing the Senate’s obstructionist rules to ensure the right to vote is upheld, a strategy Democrats have been waiting for the president to adopt.
Some advocates of the right to vote planned to boycott the speech and instead spend the day working. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, known for her tireless work for the right to vote, also skipped the event. Attendees said Abrams had a conflict, but gave no further explanation.
So far, Democrats have been unable to agree with each other on possible changes to the Senate’s obstructionist rules to allow action on voting rights, despite months of private negotiations.
In the past, Biden has been cautious in the debate: He’s a longtime ex-senator who largely abides by existing rules, but he’s also under enormous political pressure to engineer a breakthrough.
Voting rights advocates in Georgia and across the country are increasingly anxious about what may happen in 2022 and beyond, following the enactment of Republican-driven laws making it difficult to vote following Donald Trump’s defeat in 2020. and his subsequent push to nullify the results, despite no evidence of widespread fraud.
Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, who is senior pastor of a church that Biden will visit and who made history as Georgia’s first elected black senator, said before the speech that “whatever may happen will continue to shine a bright light on the urgency. of this subject is important ”.
Warnock planned to travel with Biden to Georgia on Tuesday. He said he believes Biden understood that “democracy itself is in jeopardy from this all-out assault that we have witnessed from state legislatures across the country, and this is a moral moment. Everyone must show up ”.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki dismissed complaints from some activists that Biden has not been a strong enough advocate. “I think we would question the notion that the president has not been active or expressive. He has given a variety of speeches, he has advocated for the right to vote to be approved, “he said.
Laws have already been passed in at least 19 states that make voting difficult. Voting rights groups see the changes as a more subtle form of electoral restrictions, such as literacy tests and poll taxes, that were once used to deprive black voters.
And Republicans who have lined up behind Trump’s electoral disinformation are promoting separate efforts to influence future elections by installing sympathetic leaders in local polling places and endorsing some of those who participated in the Capitol riots for elected office. from the US a year ago.
Georgia is at the center of it all, one of the key states on the battlefield in the 2020 election. As the votes were counted, Trump told a senior state election official that he wanted the official to “find” enough votes to nullify your defeat. However, the state’s votes went to Biden, and his two Senate seats also went to Democrats.
Then last year, the Republican governor signed a radical rewrite of the election rules that, among other things, gives the State Board of Elections new powers to intervene in county election offices and to remove and replace local election officials. . That has raised concerns that the Republican-controlled state board could exert more influence over the administration of the election, including certifying the county’s results.
Georgia’s voting activists said they worked tirelessly to give Democrats control of the Senate and White House, and that it is time for Washington to step up.
Congressional Democrats, for their part, drafted electoral legislation that would usher in the biggest U.S. election reform in a generation by removing barriers to voting enacted in the name of electoral security, reducing the influence of large sums of money in politics and limiting partisan influence. on the drawing of electoral districts.
The package would create national electoral standards that would trump Republican laws at the state level. It would also restore the justice department’s ability to enforce election laws in states with a history of discrimination.
But to pass the legislation, which Republicans have roundly rejected, Democrats say they must change Senate rules that allow a minority of 41 senators to block a bill.
www.theguardian.com
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism