The president of the United States, Joe Biden, will press next Tuesday for the approval of an electoral reform that puts a stop to the “corrupt” attempts by the allies of former President Donald Trump to interfere in the voting rights of Americans, especially minorities.
In a statement, the White House announced on Wednesday that Biden and the US Vice President, Kamala Harris, will travel to Atlanta (Georgia) on Tuesday the 11th to discuss the “urgent need to pass a law that protects the constitutional right to vote.”
That legislation, which Democrats have pushed through Congress so far without success, is needed to safeguard “The integrity of elections” in the United States in the face of “corrupt attempts to deprive law-abiding citizens of their fundamental freedoms,” the White House added.
More than a year following Trump refused to accept his defeat to Biden in the 2020 elections, Democrats denounce that the opposition of the Republican Party is preparing the ground to make it difficult to vote in the next election cycles and, potentially, give as well the return to a result that does not favor them.
Trump’s party last year managed to pass 33 laws restricting voting in 19 states, and experts on the American voting system warn that some of those measures increase the influence of partisan politicians in the country’s electoral administration, which might make it easier for them. a manipulation of the results.
Ten months before the November legislative elections in the United States, in which part of the federal Congress and numerous offices at the state level will be renewed, Democrats have decided to return to the fray with an attempt to pass electoral reform.
On Monday, the Democratic leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, announced that before next January 17 he would schedule a debate and a vote on the possibility of changing the rules of the Upper House, with the sole objective of later approving that electoral reform.
Last year, the Republican opposition managed to block the approval of that law thanks to a maneuver known as “filibusterism”, which makes it possible to prevent the debate of any measure if a majority of 60 votes does not meet in the Senate.
Up to now, The White House and Democratic leaders in Congress had been reluctant to try to change that rule, and it is not clear that they can succeed now that they have changed their minds, because for this they would need absolute unity in their ranks in the Senate.
In a speech last July, Biden described the Republican-driven voting restrictions at the state level as “the most significant challenge to (American) democracy since the civil war” in the mid-19th century.
The president is expected to raise the issue during his speech on Thursday on Capitol Hill on the occasion of the first anniversary of the assault by Trump supporters, but a more in-depth analysis of the problem will be reserved for next Tuesday, according to the White House.
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