Democrats took advantage of new voting restrictions in Georgia to draw attention to the struggle to revise federal electoral laws, creating a slow-building impasse that echoes the civil rights battles of half a century ago.
In fiery speeches, punctual statements and tweets, party leaders on Friday criticized the law signed the day before by the state’s Republican governor as specifically aimed at suppressing black and Latin votes and a threat to democracy. President Joe Biden issued an extensive statement, calling the law an attack on “good conscience” that denies “countless” Americans the right to vote.
“This is Jim Crow in the 21st century,” said Biden, referring to the laws of the past century that imposed violent racial segregation in the south.
“It must end. We have a moral and constitutional obligation to act, ”he said. He told reporters that the Georgia law is an “atrocity” and that the Justice Department is investigating it.
Georgia’s Republican governor Brian Kemp reacted, accusing Biden of trying to “destroy the sanctity and security of the ballot box” by supporting what the governor sees as a federal intrusion into state responsibilities.
Behind the chorus of outrage, Democrats are also struggling with the limits of their power in Washington, as long as Senate obstruction rules allow Republicans to block important legislation, including HR 1, a comprehensive electoral bill now pending in the Senate. .
Biden and his party are seeking to build and sustain momentum in the public sphere – hoping to nationalize what has until now been a movement led by Republicans, state by state, to restrict access to the polls – as they begin a slow, laborious legislative process. Meanwhile, the Allies plan to fight Georgia and other laws in court.
“What is happening in Georgia now highlights the importance and urgency,” said Sen. Rev. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., In an interview on Friday.
“It is about what is fundamental to our identity as an American people – one person, one vote.”
The emerging dispute over the politics and politics of access to voting is growing like nothing seen in recent years, referring to what many Americans can assume are well-established rules that guarantee equal access to voting.
But while Republican-controlled state legislatures, from Georgia to Iowa and Arizona are taking dramatic steps to limit early voting and force new voter identification requirements, the debate in Washington threatens to exacerbate the country’s cavernous political divisions in the early days of the presidency of Biden, just as the Democratic president promises to unite the country.
It is expected to be hard work for months in the narrowly divided Congress, specifically in the Senate, where Democrats are not yet ready to force their small majority to change the rules of obstruction, despite the party’s urgent calls for action.
Instead, Democrats are prepared to legislate the old-fashioned way, rolling out arguments in lengthy Senate debates, overflowing committee hearings and going to the Senate floor, and forcing opponents to officially declare an obstacle – as much as O South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond was positioned when he obstructed the Civil Rights Act of the last century.
“They are literally squeezing the arteries of America’s life force,” Senator Cory Booker, DN.J., the son of civil rights activists, said in an interview. “They are suffocating what makes us distinct and unique on planet Earth.”
Booker would not, however, openly call for an end to the obstruction, a parliamentary tool that requires at least 60 votes to move the Senate legislation forward in some cases.
On Friday, the president revived his call to Congress to approve HR 1, an electoral reform that would face Republican restrictions. He also called for the John Lewis Advance Voting Rights Act, which would restore some aspects of a historic law overturned by the Supreme Court in 2013.
But Biden, like fewer and fewer other powerful Democrats, remains reluctant to embrace the so-called “nuclear option” – ending the obstruction – for fear that it will further divide the country.
Meanwhile, the political struggle was intensifying in Georgia, where years of voter registration campaigns in black communities and constant changes in the population helped Biden to win the once solidly red state.
As soon as Kemp and several white state lawmakers celebrated the signing of the new state voting law on Thursday, state police officers handcuffed and forcibly removed Rep. Park Cannon, a black woman, after she knocked on the private office’s door. governor.
Cannon was accused of obstructing law enforcement and disrupting the General Assembly, both crimes. She was released from prison on Thursday. Donald Trump, the former president who promoted false allegations of electoral fraud, congratulated the Georgia governor and state leaders on the new law.
As Congress prepares for the fight, a wave of outside efforts is spending millions to try to influence the debate and apply political pressure on voters, corporations and legislators from both parties.
A $ 30 million advertising campaign is coming from the liberal group End Citizens United, which works with former Attorney General Eric Holder’s anti-gerrymandering group, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, to try to persuade Democratic and Republican senators considered final votes.
Other efforts are also underway, including former First Lady Michelle Obama, through the non-partisan celebrity “When We All Vote” organization.
Civil rights leader Al Sharpton said on Friday that he is working with religious leaders in West Virginia and Arizona to put pressure on Democratic senators in the home state. He knows that this fight can take a while.
“I am prepared to go on this fight for as long as it takes,” he said. “See how long it took us to get the right to vote.”
Sharpton also suggested that black voters were encouraged by the debate, which could lead to an increase in participation in next year’s midterm elections, despite new voting requirements enacted by Republicans.
“Because they are so blatant, I think they contribute to our national strategy,” said Sharpton. “We just need the Democrats in the Senate to stand up.”
Georgia law requires photo identification to vote absent in the mail, reduces the time people have to apply for an absentee ballot, and limits where ballots can be placed and when they can be accessed. The bill was a watered-down version of some of the proposals considered by the General Assembly led by the Republican Party.
HR 1 is vast and its Senate counterpart would face Georgia’s new law by expanding postal voting and early voting, both popular during the pandemic. This would open up access to ballots more widely, creating automatic electoral registration across the country, allowing former criminals to vote and limiting how states can remove registered voters from the lists. It also addresses campaign financing and ethics laws.
Still, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Jaime Harrison, warned that his party would take Republicans to court “and fight for it there”. A lawsuit filed on Thursday night in the United States District Court in Atlanta by three groups – New Georgia Project, Black Voters Matter Fund and Rise – challenged the main provisions of the new Georgia law and said they violated the Rights Act Voting.
But Harrison also acknowledged that the obstruction was an “obstacle” to national Democrats’ efforts to overturn Republican-backed changes.
“I’m getting the message across to everyone, especially on my side of the hall, that people are now very, very upset about where things are going,” Harrison told the AP.
The president continued: “I will do everything in my power, with every breath in my body, with every drop of blood flowing in my veins, to make sure that we will fight it.”
“We are not going back to Jim Crow 2.0,” he said. “So we have to do whatever it takes to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
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People reported from New York. Mascaro reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Bill Barrow, Josh Boak and Aamer Madhani contributed.