Biden signs executive order expanding voting access - CNNPolitics - 0 views
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President Joe Biden signed an executive order Sunday expanding voting access in what the White House calls "an initial step" in its efforts to "protect the right to vote and ensure all eligible citizens can freely participate in the electoral process."
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Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, have pushed measures in recent days to increase voting rights, including HR1 -- a sweeping ethics and election package that contains provisions expanding early and mail-in voting, restoring voting rights to former felons, and easing voter registration for eligible Americans.
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Ahead of the signing, Biden spoke about the order during virtual remarks at the Martin and Coretta King Unity Breakfast, an annual event commemorating "Bloody Sunday," where African American demonstrators demanding the right to vote were brutally beaten by police while crossing Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.
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Sunday's order directs the heads of all federal agencies to submit proposals for their respective agencies to promote voter registration and participation within 200 days, while assisting states in voter registration under the National Voter Registration Act.
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"Every eligible voter should be able to vote and have that vote counted. If you have the best ideas, you have nothing to hide. Let the people vote," he said at the event.
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"I also urge Congress to fully restore the Voting Rights Act, named in John Lewis' honor," he said, referring to the late Georgia congressman and civil rights icon who died last year.
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Biden called HR1 "a landmark piece of legislation that is urgently needed to protect the right to vote, the integrity of our elections, and to repair and strengthen our democracy."
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"For the federal agencies, many of them have footprints around the country, with offices that people, outside the context of a pandemic could walk in and seek particular services," the official told reporters Saturday. We want to make sure that we can maximize the use of that kind of walk-in service and have them be places where people can also register to vote -- the goal is to make registering to vote and voting access as easy as possible."
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The executive order also expands voter access and registration efforts for communities often overlooked in outreach, including the disabled, military serving overseas and the incarcerated.
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As of February, state legislators in 43 states had introduced more than 250 bills with restrictive voting provisions, according to a tally from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
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"The President doesn't have executive authority to prevent a state from taking that kind of action," they said. "That would require congressional action -- so this executive order uses all of the authority that the President has to be able to take steps necessary to make voter registration and voter access easy and straightforward for people, and it also uses the President's bully pulpit to send a message to all the states and to all voters about the importance of democracy."