Obama issues stark warning after Trump suggests delaying election
● Former president lambasts successor over his handling of voting procedure
Former president Barack Obama has issued a stark warning that the voting rights and equal opportunity the late civil rights leader John Lewis championed are threatened heading into the 2020 election.
Speaking at the funeral for the former congressman from the pulpit of the church that Martin Luther King Jr once led, Mr Obama did not mention President Donald Trump.
But the first black president drew unmistakable contrasts with his successor, and he implicitly lambasted how Mr Trump has handled voting procedures and civil unrest amid a national reckoning over systemic racism.
It came after Mr Trump suggested that it might be necessary to delay the November election – which he canboth not do without congressional approval – because of the unfounded threat of voter fraud.
Mr Obama called on Congress to renew the Voting Rights Act, which Mr Trump and Republican congressional leaders have left unchanged since the Supreme Court diminished the landmark law in 2012.
“You want to honour John? Let’s honour him by revitalising the law that he was willing to die for,” Mr Obama said, arguing that the bipartisan praise for the Georgia congressman since his death is not enough.
Specifically, Mr Obama called for all Americans being registered to vote automatically, restoring voting rights to criminals who have completed their sentences, expanding early voting, ending partisan gerrymandering of districts and making election day a national holiday.
Mr Obama noted that the original Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its renewals drew Republican and Democratic votes in Congress and were signed by presidents from parties. Still, Mr Obama said: “There are those in power doing their darnedest to discourage people from voting by closing polling locations and targeting minorities and students with restrictive ID laws ... even undermining the postal service in an election that’s going to be dependent on mailin ballots.”
Hours before Mr Lewis’ funeral, Mr Trump suggested delaying the November election, something he doesn’t have the authority to do.
He has claimed that a surge of mail ballots because of the coronavirus pandemic will threaten the election’s legitimacy.
He has opposed moves in Congress to help the financially struggling US Postal Service handle the sharp upsurge in mail voting.
A shift to mail voting is increasing the chances that Americans will not know the winner of November’s presidential race on election night.
But Trump has demanded that the winner of the November 3 contest be known that night. Critics say he is already seeking undermine the results of an election he could lose. “I don’t want to be waiting around for weeks and months and literally, potentially if you really did it right, years, because you’ll never know,” President Trump told reporters.
He has repeatedly raised unsubstantiated fears of fraud involving mail-in voting, which is expected to be more widely used in the election out of concern for safety given the surge of Covid-19. cases
State election officials in some key battleground states have warned that it might take days to count the votes given what they expect will be a surge of ballots sent by mail.
Republican members of Congress have also moved to reassure voters that the election would proceed on the constitutionally mandated day, as it has for more than two centuries.
Iowa senator Chuck Grassley said: “All I can say is, it doesn’t matter what one individual in this country says. We still are a country based on the rule of law, and we want to follow the law.”