US President Joe Biden announced in Georgia on Tuesday that he will do everything he can to get a proposed reform of the American suffrage approved. The amendment aims to protect access to polling stations for minorities, especially black Americans.
In Georgia and other predominantly Republican states, older and newer laws exist that make it more difficult for these people to vote, for example by closing polling stations in poor neighborhoods and shortening polling hours so people have less time to vote. Voting by mail is also restricted.
“I will defend your right to vote and our democracy against enemies from within and without,” Biden said during a speech in Atlanta, Georgia. Getting the reform through must also look at Senate rules. Biden says voting issues are the biggest test of American democracy since the Civil War.
The visit to Georgia comes less than a week after Biden’s plea for democracy and against his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump, on the first “anniversary” of the storming of the Capitol.
Reforms
With his statements, Biden formally endorses a reform that should define the conditions under which the right to vote can be exercised: from registration in the electoral registers to voting by post or verification of identity to counting of votes. These criteria were tampered with in many southern states, primarily intended to make it more difficult for black Americans to vote.
“I support changing the Senate rules to prevent a minority of senators from blocking actions around voting rights,” the president said. He also wants an abolition of the filibuster, allowing the minority to ensure that 60 senators are needed to vote on a bill. He makes that recommendation ‘after careful consideration’, but ‘recognizes that the fundamental right to a vote is a right from which all other rights arise’.
Biden called on Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote Act. “We will take dirty money out of politics, put the districts on the map more fairly and end partisan gerrymandering.”
Gerrymandering allows the party in power in a state to redraw the boundaries of the constituencies every few years. Every effort is made to favor a particular political party or candidate. Often so that the opposition – even if it forms a numerical majority in the region – cannot possibly win in the districts.
Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday that the Senate could vote on Biden’s reform as early as Wednesday. However, the chances are slim that the Republicans will go along with this.
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