Biden to make ‘moral argument’ for voting rights in major speech on Tuesday

Biden’s speech comes in the aftermath of former President Donald Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and as Republican-controlled legislatures pushed forward with new imposing state laws limits on voting. Since the November election, state lawmakers have enacted 28 laws in 17 states that restrict access to ballots, according to a June tally from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School.

In recent days, the eyes of voting rights advocates have turned to Texas, where GOP lawmakers are mounting new pressure for restrictive election laws in a special 30-day legislative session that Republican Gov. Greg Abbott says he wants to see some focus on “electoral integrity”. Texas Democratic lawmakers fled the state in an attempt to deny a quorum in the special session, which would prevent new laws from being passed.

The president and his team have repeatedly announced a major push on voting rights after Republicans in the U.S. Senate blocked a sweeping electoral reform bill last month, but it is not yet clear what it is. can accomplish. Passing new congressional voting legislation will almost certainly require changing the filibuster rules, as Democrats’ slim majority in the Senate isn’t enough to overcome GOP opposition – and it’s not clear that Democrats have the votes to pass a bill anyway.

And Biden said his efforts must go beyond simply limiting black money in politics or making Election Day a federal holiday – two elements included in the major bill blocked by Republicans last month. . He said in June that Democratic efforts must expand to limit the ability of election commissions to reject results or replace officials on the basis of ideology.

But with no clear legislative path in sight, the administration announced a $ 25 million expansion of a Democratic National Committee-led effort on voting rights – although civil rights activists have pushed the president to do more. .

The High Court upheld two provisions of an Arizona voting law. The first provision states that in-person ballots cast in the wrong constituency on polling day must be rejected entirely. Another provision restricts a practice known as “ballot collection,” requiring that only family caregivers, letter carriers and election officials can deliver another person’s completed ballot to a polling station.

“In the space of just eight years, the Court has now severely damaged two of the most important provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act – a law that took years of struggle and struggle to secure it,” Biden said in a statement. react to the decision. “After everything we have gone through to keep this nation’s promise to all Americans, we should fully enforce the franchise laws, not weaken them.”

The president, said Psaki, “will denounce the greatest irony of the big lie” that “no election in our history has reached such a high standard, with more than 80 judges, including those appointed by his predecessor, rejecting all of them. challenges”.