This content was published on January 11, 2022 – 04:26 PM
11 January 2022 – 16:26

(AFP)

US President Joe Biden will travel to Georgia on Tuesday to deliver on an important promise from his presidency: to protect minority voting access, especially African American voters, on a symbolic yet risky journey.

The president will officially back the controversial move that would weaken the Republican opposition’s grip in the Senate, a senior White House official said.

“I will not back down. I will not hesitate. I will defend your right to vote and our democracy from internal and external enemies,” the democrat will say, according to a previously published excerpt from his speech.

Continuing demonstrations in defense of democracy, as he did last week on Capitol Hill, Biden chose Georgia, a symbol of the South in past civil rights struggles and current political tensions, to advocate for sweeping legal reform. .. vote.

The aim is to legislate the conditions under which voting takes place, from registration in the voter census to ballot counting, postal voting and verification of the identity of voters.

Many conservative southern states have begun to change these requirements, effectively making it difficult for minorities in general, especially African Americans, to vote.

– Filibustering –

To counter these Republican initiatives, Biden wants Congress to establish a federal legislative framework. To that end, the president intends to pass two laws, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, to, he says, protect the gains in the struggle for civil rights and against racial discrimination that will return to the 1960s.

The spokesman will say that he is “in favor of changing the rules of the Senate so that he can work again.”

There is a risky political adventure behind this cryptic phrase.

Biden has so far resisted ending a practice so ingrained that it is difficult to understand outside of the United States, known in parliamentary jargon as “filibuster.”

This rule, in a simplified form, requires the Senate to collect 60 votes to put a bill to a vote, with the exception of the budget law.

But Biden is in favor of changing it for a simple majority vote. Democrats are currently ranked 51st compared to 50 for Republicans.

If he abandons this 60-vote rule, the Democratic president will incur the wrath of the conservative opposition and, possibly, some member of his party who supports this practice, which will supposedly promote consensus and moderation.

– “Uprising” –

However, for Biden, whose economic and social agenda is stuck and his popularity ratings have fallen, there is no time for moderation in the face of Donald Trump, who continues to claim, against all evidence, that he won the last election.

Democrats have accused supporters of the former president of changing the electoral rules in the states that control Republicans, counting on their own benefit.

Georgia, for example, has limited mail-order voting and has banned the provision of water and food to voters who wait, sometimes hours, to vote. The state has also tightened control over the voting process by local legislators, most of whom are conservatives.

“This is a low profile but very, very pernicious insurgency,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer.

Despite the fact that Biden has advocated the eradication of filibusters in the Senate, he is still far from imposing his will.

The president needs to get the votes of all Democratic senators without exception, and Joe Manchin, who has already blocked a massive trillion-dollar investment package for social reforms promoted by the president, does not want to support him in his “right to vote” crusade.

Biden doesn’t have much time to convince him, as Democrats risk losing their meager parliamentary majority in the November midterm legislature.