President Biden, Please Speak Out Now to Champion Our Own Democracy

On December 9, The White House hosted a democracy summit to focus on challenges and opportunities facing other democracies. And yet, we still haven’t addressed the pressing issues facing our own. The President and the Senate need to turn all of their attention to passing the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act before the end of the year. The Census Bureau released results on August 12, which started the redistricting process and was the deadline for the Freedom to Vote Act (formerly the For the People Act) to have the most impact in stopping the corrupt partisan gerrymandering that is now taking place across the country. We are running out of time for it to have any impact at all in preventing gerrymandering for the 2022 midterms. In addition, nearly 400 state voter suppression bills have been introduced or enacted across the country this past year. On July 13, President Biden said the fight for voting rights is the “most significant test for our democracy since the Civil War”. It’s time to speak out against the filibuster in order to address it, which as President Obama stated during his eulogy for John Lewis, is a Jim Crow relic. The filibuster has been used for decades to derail civil rights legislation and history is now repeating itself. In 1963, it was denounced by Martin Luther King Jr. as a tragedy used by misguided Senators to “block people from even voting” — and that was back when Senators had to stand on the floor to use it, rather than just send an email as they do today! The Senate must delay the winter recess, do their job, and fulfill their constitutional duty to protect our democracy by passing the Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act this year. If they instead try to adjourn, President Biden should call them into special session. We are out of time and our democracy is on the line.