Biden allies launch voting rights initiative
A nonprofit group created by associates of President Biden is introducing a voting rights initiative, the current sign that the White House views the matter as a main part of Biden’s first agenda.
Building Back Together said its voting rights agenda would be led by Bob Bauer, who instructed Biden’s presidential campaign and was White House counsel during the Obama administration.
“A broad-based coalition is required to expose the serious and continuing disinformation about the 2020 election, and to defend against the use of that disinformation to advance wholly unjustified and all too often flatly illegal restrictions on access to the polls,” Bauer said in an disclosure given to POLITICO. “We also need to stand behind the election administrators of both parties now under attack for their dedicated non-partisan service to voters.”
Bauer will be linked with Rubén Lebrón, who will be the agenda’s voting rights director. The group pledged to advance federal legislation, “support pro-voter advocacy groups in analyzing and developing strategic responses to state election laws and practices,” and coordinate with voting rights groups on data sharing and messaging. It said it would partner with organizations including Fair Fight — which is led by Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams — the ACLU and Common Cause.
The group stated nine states as its “initial priority states”: Arizona, Georgia, Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin.
Further details on Building Back Together’s plans were lacking, and the organization denied to share a dollar amount behind the initiative.
The early months of the Biden administration have been controlled by meetings on voting rights, as Republican-controlled state legislatures move forward legislation that is in some way restricting voters’ access to the polls. Building Back Together said it will be fixated on advancing voting access and building up American democracy through landmark federal legislation, naming two important pieces of federal legislation.
Congressional Democrats have urged the For the People Act, also known as H.R. 1 or S.1, which would amount to a sweeping federalized overhaul of the electoral system across the country. It would set essential floors for many voting policies, like demanding no-excuse absentee voting and in-person early voting, and also have a public financing provision that remains controversial among some Democrats on the Hill, along with ethics reform targeted at Washington.
The House passed the bill in the beginning of March, amidst a lot Republican resistance to the bill, who described it as “power grab” by Democrats.
Biden has constantly voiced his approval of the legislation — along with the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act, H.R. 4 or the Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore pre-clearance guidelines to the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 that were cleared out by a 2013 Supreme Court decision.
H.R. 1’s fate in the Senate remains undecided, despite Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer pledging it will see the floor, giving a vote by August as a target. Senator Joe Manchin is the only Democrat to have not signed on to co-sponsor the legislation, constantly saying he believes election legislation should be undertaken in a bipartisan matter.
“How in the world could you, with the tension we have right now, allow a voting bill to restructure the voting of America on a partisan line?” he stated in an interview with Vox posted earlier this week.
Manchin and other Democrats have also avoided calls to scrap or otherwise change the filibuster, despite hassle from Black lawmakers and activists. Somehow modifying the filibuster would be a requirement for H.R 1 to pass the Senate even if Manchin were to give in, given the chamber’s even 50-50 split.
The Voting Rights Advancement Act, which is processing on a much slower schedule, has yet to be introduced again in the House. Some Black lawmakers are pressuring Democrats to focus on the bill named after the late civil rights icon instead of H.R. 1, believing it has a better chance of becoming law.