Advertisement
On Balance | A defeat of US voting rights bill will embolden efforts to overturn election results
- As Biden and the Democrats mull the likely failure of their attempt to protect voting rights, Trump’s hold on the Republican Party and the popular imagination shows no sign of easing
Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
1
Martin Luther King Jnr Day, on January 17 this year, marks the start of the week that US President Joe Biden is likely to see his effort to protect voting rights in America fall apart.
The Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, written by his Democratic Party and championed by the US leader, would block efforts under way in several Republican-controlled states to restrict absentee voting. It would also stop state legislators from redrawing electoral boundaries in a way that undercuts minority voter representation, and make election day a public holiday.
Not a single Republican senator will support the bill, so Biden needs every Democrat in the chamber to vote for a change in rules governing the filibuster, a tradition that allows the minority party to block legislation that fails to garner 60 votes. But at least one, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, is opposing the move.
Advertisement
The timing is a cruel irony for Americans who tried to close a chapter of the country’s history that will sit alongside McCarthyism and Jim Crow.
But that’s the point as far as the majority of Republicans are concerned. Winners write the history. Therefore, what the party’s new spiritual leader Donald Trump started when he incited his followers to try to overturn the 2020 election, must be carried out to its conclusion.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Select Voice
Select Speed
1.00x