Biden to sign executive order expanding voting access

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The move comes just three days after the House of Representatives passed HR1, a broad set of ethics and elections aimed at securing the right to vote, with provisions expanding early and postal voting, restoring voting rights former criminals and facilitating voter registration for eligible Americans. .

Sunday’s ordinance directs heads of all federal agencies to submit proposals for their respective agencies to promote voter registration and participation within 200 days, while helping states register to voters. under the National Voter Registration Act. In addition, the ordinance would direct the General Service Administration to modernize the federal government’s Vote.gov portal.

“The president’s commitment to democracy is to make it easier and fairer for all eligible Americans to exercise their fundamental right to vote,” an administration official told reporters on Saturday, adding that the Sunday’s decree “would leverage federal government resources to expand citizens.” opportunities to register to vote, to get information and to participate in the electoral process. “

Biden is expected to announce the order during virtual remarks at the Martin and Coretta King Unity Breakfast, an annual event commemorating “Bloody Sunday,” where African-American protesters demanding the right to vote were brutally beaten by police as they walked through. the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.

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“For federal agencies, many of them have footprints across the country, with offices that people, outside of the context of a pandemic, could come in and seek out particular services,” the official said on Saturday. to journalists. We want to make sure that we can maximize the use of this type of walk-in service and make them places where people can also register to vote – the goal is to make registration to vote and access voting as easy as possible. “

The decree also expands voter access and registration efforts for communities often overlooked in outreach, including the disabled, military personnel serving overseas, and incarcerated people.

Yet much of the administration’s hope for voter protection lies in legislation like HR1. As of February, state lawmakers in 43 states had introduced more than 250 bills with restrictive voting provisions, according to a tally from New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice.
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The official admitted on Saturday that in many cases the president did not have the power to overrule these state-level arrangements, acknowledging that laws like the one recently passed by the Georgian State Chamber controlled by the GOP limiting early voting would require an act of Congress.

“The president does not have the executive power to prevent a state from taking this kind of action,” they said. “This would require action by Congress – so this decree uses all the authority the President has to be able to take the necessary steps to make voter registration and voter access easy and straightforward for people, and he also uses the President’s Chair of Intimidation to send a message to all states and voters about the importance of democracy ”.

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