WASHINGTON – President Biden signed an executive order on Sunday instructing the government to take steps to facilitate voting. This was the 56th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Ala.
The multi-part ordinance aims to harness the far-flung reach of federal agencies to help people register to vote and encourage Americans to vote on election day. In a speech for the Martin and Coretta King Unity Breakfast on Sunday, Mr. Biden argued that despite the progress of the past half century, such measures are still necessary.
“The legacy of the Selma March is that nothing can stop a free people from exercising their most sacred power as citizens, but there are those who do anything to take that power away,” said Biden.
“Every eligible voter should be able to vote and let it count,” he said. “When you have the best ideas, you have nothing to hide. Let more people choose. “
The president’s actions stem from his predecessor’s month-long attack on the voting process during the 2020 election and the January 6 riot that erupted in the U.S. Capitol after that predecessor, Donald J. Trump, repeatedly attempted the Reverse election results.
The order of the executive is relatively limited. It urges federal officials to investigate and possibly expand access to voter registration materials, particularly for people with disabilities, incarcerated and other historically underserved groups.
In addition, a modernization of the federally operated website Vote.gov is ordered to ensure that the most up-to-date information on votes and elections is made available.
However, the ordinance does not directly address efforts by many Republican-led lawmakers to restrict voting, including measures that would reverse postal voting established in many states during the pandemic.
Mr Biden has said he supports HR 1, a sweeping law on electoral rights that was passed by Parliament last week. This would weaken restrictive state voter identification laws, require automatic voter registration, expand mail-in voting and early voting, make it more difficult to remove voters from the list, and restore the right to vote for ex-offenders.
This legislation faces a difficult challenge in the evenly divided Senate, where the Republican opposition makes it highly unlikely to win the support of the 60 senators required to send it to Mr Biden’s desk.
Meanwhile, a senior administration official said that Mr Biden’s order was intended to show that the president was doing what he could.
