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One year after taking the oath of office, Joe Biden suffered a serious setback.U.S. President Joe Biden’s last attempt to protect voting rights failed in the Senate on Wednesday due to Unanimous blockade of the Republican opposition and divisions within his own party.
First, Republicans refuse to consider Biden’s great electoral reform, using a tactic called block and allow Debate on any measure is blocked if at least 60 votes are not reached.
Hours later, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer proposed changing the chamber’s rules to reduce filibuster powers and debated the measure. However, as predicted, He failed to get the support he needed from his team.
Democratic Senators Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia joined Republicans in voting against the game changer.Republican blockade and Divisiveness within the Democratic Party They represent setbacks for Biden, who will take office tomorrow Thursday for a year.
Items Democrats want to pass in the Senate will guarantee the right to early voting and voting by mail, in addition to making Election Day a national holiday, which could increase participation since the U.S. always holds elections on a working Tuesday in November.
It would also allow the Justice Department to oversee any changes to state election laws that have a history of discriminating against minorities.
wait eight hours
Raphael Warnock, an African-American senator from Georgia whose office could be in jeopardy due to voting restrictions approved by the state, gave a A moving speech in a half-wheeler And thinks today has a “moral” side to America, and warns it will go down in history.
He recounted how a woman named Verona told him she had to Standing in line for eight hours in the rain Being able to vote in the November 2020 election and explaining how some college students decided not to vote because they didn’t want to miss classes.
“These are the consequences of the laws that are being passed in Georgia and across the country,” said Warnock, the pastor of an Atlanta church where Martin Luther King, Jr., the assassinated civil rights leader in 1968, preached.
In recent days, King’s son and other civil rights leaders have been lobbying the Senate to end Voting restrictions that hurt minorities And the population with fewer resources, who already vote in smaller proportions.
disappointed with Biden
For his part, Biden said in a message on Twitter that he was “deeply disappointed” by the failure of major electoral reforms. “I am deeply disappointed by this The Senate is not defending our democracy. I am disappointed, but not discouraged,” the president said.
However, he promised he would continue to push for change Protect America’s Voting Rights He’s back on his feet, backing changes to Senate rules to reduce filibuster powers, a request he hadn’t made until a few days ago.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, who is president of the Senate, attended the vote, signaling the government’s importance to the issue. In a statement to the press, she pledged that neither she nor the president would “give up” and assured that protecting the right to vote is the “foundation” of American democracy.
The current voting rights battle is happening because the United States does not have a central electoral system, and Each state has its own election rules.
The easing of mail-in or early voting requirements in many districts during the pandemic has led to record turnout in the 2020 election and fuelled then-President Donald Trump (2017-2021) and his followers conspiracy theories Alleged mass fraud in voting was dismissed by court for lack of evidence.
In response, Republicans passed 33 vote-restricting laws in 19 states over the past year. Some of these laws make voting by mail harder, shorten early voting deadlines, and even penalize the act of providing water or food to people who stand in long lines to exercise their rights.