President Joe Biden started 2022 with more aggressive speeches against the opposition, something he was not used to doing. This Tuesday (11), the Democrat again spoke harshly, attacking his predecessor, Donald Trump, and saying that the opposition is putting the country’s democracy in danger.
In a speech in Atlanta, Biden repeated that the Jan. “For Georgia Republicans, it’s a problem to have too many people voting. The battle for America’s soul is not over,” he said. “Republicans want the will of voters to be a mere suggestion.”
“I’ve been having close conversations with congressmen for the past two months. But I’m tired of keeping quiet,” he said, in an impassioned tone.
As a solution, Biden defends the approval of two laws to expand the right to vote, and which can be voted on later this month. One of them, the Freedom to Vote Act, provides for several measures, including standardizing procedures such as voter registration, voting by mail, access to polling places and control of campaign donations. The other, dubbed the John Lewis Act, proposes to facilitate the access of blacks, Latinos and other groups historically excluded from elections in some US states, especially in the South, and provides for punishments for local governments that insist on these practices. (See a summary of the proposals at the end of the text).
“In the coming days, when these laws are put to a vote, there will be a turning point in this nation. Will we choose democracy over autocracy, light over shadow, justice over injustice?” . “I know where I stand. I won’t give in. I won’t hesitate. I will defend your right to vote and our democracy against all foreign and domestic enemies. And the question is: where will the Senate institutions be?”, he provoked.
Currently, each state can define how it organizes the election, which makes it easier to vote for some of them and more difficult for others. Bureaucratic measures to make it more difficult for blacks, Latinos and other minorities to vote have been adopted in the country since the 19th century, especially in southern states such as Georgia, where Biden decided to deliver this Tuesday’s speech. Before the speech, he and his deputy, Kamala Harris, met with family members of civil rights leader Martin Luther King (1910-1968), and laid flowers at his grave.
Republicans are against change. To break the deadlock in Congress, the president defended changing the rules of the “filibuster” practice, a procedure that allows the minority party to block the approval of measures. With this, the opposition can ask for a debate in the Plenary on the projects under analysis, without a deadline to finish, which postpones their vote indefinitely. This debate can only be closed with the support of 60 of the 100 senators. Today, Democrats are hostage to the measure, as they have only 50 legislators and the tie-breaking vote.
However, to change the filibuster rules, it takes consensus within the party itself. Again, Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are against it. The two were the main obstacles to the approval of a trillion-dollar social investment package, locked in the Senate for months.
“Completely taking away the minority’s opportunity to participate is simply not who we are,” Manchin said, reaffirming his position on Tuesday.
One of the arguments against changing the rule is that, in the future, Democrats will eventually return to the minority at some point, and will have less power to block Republican projects. Thus, one way out would be not to end the rule altogether, but to prevent its use in some cases, such as questions about the right to vote.
In another sign of disunity between Democrats and allies, some leaders in the Georgia voting rights campaign have decided not to attend Biden’s speech, as a way of showing they are advocating more concrete action rather than words. “We don’t need any more speeches and platitudes. We need action, and we need it right away,” said the Rev. James Woodall, former president of the Georgia section of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). “We did our part. We fought, we organized, we voted. And now it’s time for the president and vice-president to do theirs. Enough with the platitudes and niceties.”
“When you’re diagnosed with cancer, you don’t wait a year to start treatment,” Ian Bassin, director of the Protect Democracy group, told the New York Times.
One of the absentees was Democratic Representative Stacey Abrams, who led a major effort to register voters in the state, which helped Biden win the 2020 election. Asked about the absence, the president said he spoke to Abrams in the morning and there was a scheduling problem, but that the two “are on the same page and everything is fine”.
Biden and Democrats want to pass more weighty legislation before the November elections, when Congress will be renewed. Because the party has narrow majorities in the House and Senate, they could be lost even if Republicans have a slight advantage at the polls.
With nearly a year in office, Biden faces a series of difficult months. Its approval dropped in the second half of 2021 after the chaotic exit from Afghanistan and has since hovered around 43% approval. He managed to approve a package of investments in infrastructure in November, but he still hasn’t managed to get another plan, for social and environmental spending, called BBB (Build Back Better) off the ground.
Thus, the president started 2022 leaving the BBB in the background and giving prominence to the defense of access to the vote. And changed the tone of his speeches. On January 6, the day that the Capitol invasion completed one year, Biden had already used a more aggressive tone and made attacks on former President Donald Trump.
“The former president created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election. And he did so because he sees his interests as more important than the interests of America. His bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy and Constitution. He cannot accept that he lost,” said Biden, on Thursday (6).
Biden is putting aside attempts to seek conciliation and to pretend that Trump does not exist. Although banned from the main social networks, the former president continues to be heard by right-wing media, such as Fox News, and recent polls show that the former president remains the main figure in the party, which has sought to change laws to try to avoid further defeats at the polls.
Through 2021, at least 19 states, including Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania,
changed electoral rules to make access to the vote more difficult. The measures adopted do not prohibit people from voting, but make access difficult. The list of tactics includes requiring very specific documents, making it difficult for voters to register, restricting postal voting, and reducing polling locations and hours of operation so long lines discourage participation.
Another practice is “gerrymandering”: the redesign of constituencies to favor Republican candidates. In the US, in general, each district elects only one candidate. Thus, Republicans seek to redraw the electoral map to gain advantages, such as concentrating Democratic voters in fewer areas.
Human rights activists and Democrats point out that these measures mainly affect groups like blacks and Latinos, who tend to vote less Republican. “When black and Latino Americans are forced to wait in lines for hours to vote, when voting on Sundays is withdrawn, our democracy is devalued. These laws attack the stench left by racist practices and must be passed”, defends Ben Olinsky, an expert. in governance from the think tank Center for American Progress.
On the other hand, Republicans and part of the Conservatives defend that the electoral rules continue to be defined by the states, and that the laws under debate will facilitate future fraud. “The HR-4 [Lei John Lewis] It is a leftist initiative designed to remove electoral safeguards and pave the way for cheaters to manipulate elections in their favor.”
Changes under debate
Freedom to Vote Act
Status: presented in the Senate in September, awaiting vote, barred by filibuster.
It will require the 50 states to standardize electoral rules, such as:
- Allow early access for at least two weeks prior to the election, including evening and weekend hours. Election Day would become a national holiday.
- Expand mail-in voting to all voters, with online ordering.
- Facilitate the registration of voters, who can be registered automatically from lists such as those of drivers registered with the traffic departments.
- Standardize the way voters are identified at the time of voting, allowing the use of several possible documents.
- It increases penalties for actions that seek to intimidate voters into not voting.
- It authorizes ex-detainees to vote.
- Determines to install more polling stations, so queues on polling day do not take longer than 30 minutes.
- It extends the protection of electoral officials against possible removal from office for partisan reasons.
- Increases penalties for banknote fraud.
- It prohibits gerrymandering (redesigning constituencies for partisan purposes) and sets clear criteria for such changes.
- It increases enforcement over electoral donations: anyone who gives more than US$ 10,000 will need to be publicly identified.
- It will bring resources to modernize old voting systems, which will have to generate paper records.
John Lewis Act to advance the right to vote
Status: approved in the House on Aug.21, awaiting a vote in the Senate
It proposes measures to facilitate the access of blacks, Latinos and other groups historically excluded from elections in some US states, especially in the South, and foresees punishments for local governments that insist on these practices.
Filibuster rule changes
Bill still needs to be presented.
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