Joe biden travels to Georgia on Tuesday to advance a crucial promise of his presidency, to protect access to the minority vote, especially for African Americans, a symbolic and risky journey.
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The president will formally support a controversial move in Congress to pass an electoral reform in the Senate that Republicans oppose, said a senior White House official.
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“I will not back down. I will not hesitate. I will defend your right to vote and our democracy against enemies from within and without,” the 79-year-old Democrat will say, according to an excerpt from the speech he will give in Georgia.
Continuing with his defense of democracy that he made last week in the CapitolBiden chose this southern and slave state, emblem of yesterday’s civil rights struggle but also of current political tensions, to, according to him, defend the voting rights of minorities.
The objective is to legislate on the conditions in which the vote is exercised, from the registration in the electoral roll to the counting of ballots, passing through suffrage by mail and the verification of the identity of the voters.
Many conservative southern states have begun to change these requirements, effectively making it difficult for minorities in general to vote, especially African Americans.
Filibusterism in the United States Senate
To counter these Republican initiatives, Biden wants Congress to establish a federal legislative framework. To do this, the president intends to pass two laws, the John Lewis Advancement of Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, to, according to him, protect the achievements of the fight for civil rights and against racial discrimination, which They date back to the 1960s.
The president will say that he is “in favor of changing the rules of the Senate to guarantee that it can work again.” Behind this enigmatic phrase, there is a risky political bet.
Until now, Biden has been reluctant to put an end to a practice as entrenched as it is difficult to understand outside the United States, known in parliamentary jargon as filibuster.
This rule, in simple terms, requires the Senate to gather 60 votes to put a bill to the vote, with the exception of the budget one. But Biden is in favor of a simple majority vote.
Democrats currently have 51 seats, compared to 50 for Republicans. By breaking this 60-vote rule, the Democratic president will enrage the conservative opposition and possibly a member of his party who supports this practice, which is supposed to promote consensus and moderation.
‘It is a low-profile insurgency, but very pernicious’
But for Biden, whose economic and social agenda is bogged down and his popularity index is shaking, there is no time for restraint in the face of a Donald Trump who continues to affirm against all evidence that he won the last election.
Democrats accuse the former president’s supporters of changing electoral rules in Republican-controlled states for their own benefit.
Georgia, for example, restricted voting by mail, or prohibited the provision of food or water to voters who wait, sometimes for hours, to vote.
This state also increased the control of local legislators – most of whom are conservatives – over the voting process. “It is a low-key insurgency, but very, very pernicious,” said Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer.
Despite being in favor of eliminating filibustering in the Senate, Biden is far from getting away with it. He needs to rally all Democratic senators without exception, and Joe Manchin, who has already blocked a huge billion-dollar investment package for social reforms pushed by the president, is reluctant to support him in his “right to vote” crusade.
Biden doesn’t have much time to convince him, as Democrats risk losing their slim parliamentary majority in the fall during the midterm elections.
AFP
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