With Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona still refusing to end the filibuster and pass two election reform bills, Democratic politicians are claiming Republicans will prevent fair midterm elections in November.
The two bills, the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, would nationalize elections by stopping states and locales from setting limits on absentee ballots, banning ballot harvesting, and changing polling locations without federal approval, as well as other changes. Democrats say that these changes are needed to stop local Republicans from being involved in voter suppression and throwing out validly cast ballots.
President Joe Biden said opponents of the bills were the heirs of segregationists, and laws requiring voter ID and banning line-warming as “Jim Crow 2.0.” He also said that individuals who support the stricter ID standards “plan to subvert the election.”
“History has never been kind to those who’ve sided with voter suppression over voters’ rights, and it will be even less kind for those who side with election subversion,” Biden said. “Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? The side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? The side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?” he asked.
House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina defended Biden’s remarks saying that Biden’s critics lack the personal experience necessary to understand his comments.
“This is Jim Crow 2.0. That was one of the strongest points of the president’s speech that I agree with. So, this whole notion, when you walk around and no one has ever discriminated against you because of your skin color or you have never had to worry about having your vote counted, you can have those kinds of statements,” he said.
During her Martin Luther King Jr. Day address, Vice President Kamala Harris said that opponents of the legislation wish “to interfere with our elections, to get the outcomes they want and to discredit those they do not.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that Republicans want to “rig the game and rig the count,” so a compromise position such as reforming the Electoral Count Act would be unacceptable to his caucus.
“If you’re going to rig the game and then say, ‘count the rigged game accurately,’ what good is that?” he asked.
The top Democrat’s claims come as polls and analysts indicate that Republicans will potentially take back the House and Senate by wide margins in the November midterms.
Republicans need to gain only five House seats and one Senate seat to win back both chambers, while the president’s party has on average lost 26 seats in the midterm elections conducted since the end of World War II. The only midterm elections that the president’s party did not lose seats were in 1998, as Republicans impeached former President Bill Clinton, and 2002, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
