Biden signs executive order promoting voting rights
The order comes on the 56th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” the day on which state troopers violently beat hundreds of marchers, including John Lewis, the late civil rights icon and Democratic congressman from Georgia, on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala.
WASHINGTON >> President Joe Biden on Sunday signed an executive order aimed at promoting voting rights amid a push by Republicanled state legislatures to roll back voting access in the wake of former president Donald Trump’s 2020 loss and his baseless effort to cast doubt on the integrity of U.S. elections.
The order comes on the 56th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” the day on which state troopers violently beat hundreds of marchers, including John Lewis, the late civil rights icon and Democratic congressman from Georgia, on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala.
“Today, on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, I am signing an executive order to make it easier for eligible voters to register to vote and improve access to voting,” Biden said Sunday in a videotaped address to the Martin and Coretta Scott King Unity Breakfast. “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.”
The order directs federal agencies to develop a strategic plan for promoting voter registration and participation, including potentially applying to be a state-designated voter registration agency and providing recommendations on leave for federal employees to vote or to serve as poll workers.
Some states have programs to automatically register eligible Americans to vote, unless they opt out, when they interact with DMVS as well as state agencies that administer federal programs such as military recruitment, Medicaid
and food stamps. Under the Trump administration, however, some federal agencies refused to share the data that would allow states to automatically register voters this way, citing concerns about the privacy of health data. Biden’s executive order instructs federal agencies to relax that policy.
The order also aims to expand access to voting among active-duty members of the military as well as to all eligible federally incarcerated people.
And it establishes a steering group on Native American voting rights tasked with producing recommendations by next year on expanding voter outreach and turnout among Native American communities.
Biden’s move comes days after the House passed expansive legislation to create uniform national voting standards, overhaul campaign finance laws and outlaw partisan redistricting.