President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are planning to visit Atlanta, Georgia, next week – but a coalition of voting rights organizations are telling them to stay in Washington, D.C., unless they can visit with a plan for strengthening voting protections across the U.S.
In a statement from the White HouseBiden and Harris announced earlier this week that they would be visiting Atlanta Tuesday, January 11, in an effort to promote voting rights legislation in Congress.
Several Republican-led States are found across the country. Georgia, have passed Highly restrictive voting laws following former President Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election. Biden is the first Democrat to win Georgia in a presidential race since 1992.
A coalition of voting rights organizations released this week a statement stating that Biden and Harris should be delayed until they explain how voting legislation can be passed in a narrowly divided Congress. A number of pieces of voting rights legislation were actually rejected by the Senate. Due to Republican filibusters.
The group suggested that a visit to the state without a plan in place to overcome these hurdles would be pointless. It was merely a publicity stunt.
“Georgia will not be used as a two-dimensional backdrop, a chess piece in someone else’s ineffectual political dealings,” the coalition said in a statement.
They also added:
Georgia voters made history. They overcame threats, obstacles, and suppressive laws to deliver their White House and US Senate. They were then forced to accept bland promises and political platitudes in return. This empty gesture without any concrete action and without tangible signs of work is unacceptable.
The New Georgia Project Action Fund was among the groups that participated in issuing the statement.
The coalition said it would “reject any visit by President Biden that does not include an announcement of a finalized voting rights plan that will pass both chambers, not be stopped by the filibuster, and be signed into law.”
“Anything less is insufficient and unwelcome,” they added.
The Biden administration has not yet responded to the groups’ demand.
Harris and Biden addressed the nation on Thursday to commemorate the one year anniversary of the attack against the U.S. Capitol building. They stressed the importance of protecting voting rights and pointed out that the same lies which drove Trump loyalists from attacking Congress were being used by Harris to attack the right for citizens to vote at statehouses across the country.
“Right now, in state after state, new laws are being written not to protect the vote, but to deny it,” Biden said in his speech. “Not only to suppress the vote, but to subvert it. Not to strengthen and protect our democracy, but because the former president lost.”
Since several months, efforts to pass legislation on voting rights have been stalled by Republican filibusters. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader, said earlier this week that Democrats would take action for changes to filibuster rulesUnless Republicans allow the passage of voting rights legislation, the chamber will not be filled.
Schumer also referred to the attack on Capitol as an assault on voting rights in his statement.
“Much like the violent insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol nearly one year ago, Republican officials in states across the country have seized on the former president’s Big Lie about widespread voter fraud to enact anti-democratic legislation and seize control of typically non-partisan election administration functions,” Schumer. The Senate would “take strong action to stop this antidemocratic march” by passing voting rights protection bills, he went on – even if Democrats had to change the filibuster rule to do so.
However, Schumer’s statement didn’t elaborate whether he was seeking to alter the filibuster or end it altogether.
