(Washington) The trip is symbolically charged and politically risky: Joe Biden goes to Georgia on Tuesday to advance a crucial promise of his presidency, that of protecting the access of minorities, and particularly African-Americans, to the right to vote.
The American President, along with Vice President Kamala Harris, chose this southern state, emblematic of the past struggle for civil rights, but also of today’s political rifts, in order to defend a draft legislation on “voting. rights ”.
It is not a question of legislating on the right to vote itself, but on the conditions under which it is exercised, from the registration on the electoral registers to the counting of the votes, including the postal vote. or verification of the identity of voters.
These are all criteria that many conservative states in the South have undertaken to modify, with the effect of complicating, in practice, access to the ballot box for African Americans and minorities in general.
“We must be firm, resolute and inflexible in our defense of the right to vote and the right to have every vote count,” the Democratic president tweeted on Monday.
” At the throat ”
“We are attacking the beast by the throat, we are attacking attempts to bar access to the ballot box, we are attacking subversion and electoral obstruction,” proclaimed one of his advisers, Cedric Richmond, quoted by the Politico site.
Joe Biden, whose economic and social agenda has stalled, has given himself a new priority: protecting the achievements of the “Voting Rights Act”.
This text, which crowned years of struggle for civil rights, has prohibited since 1965 discrimination in access to the vote.
Activists believe this legacy is under threat in several states, whose Republican leaders fervently support Donald Trump and his baseless statements about massive fraud in the last presidential election.
Georgia, where Joe Biden is going, has, for example, restricted the exercise of postal voting, or banned the distribution of water or meals to voters who wait, sometimes for hours, to vote. The State has also strengthened the control of local elected officials – mostly conservatives – over voting operations.
“It’s a low noise insurgency, but very, very pernicious,” said Chuck Schumer, leader of the Democratic senators.
In response, Joe Biden wants parliament to lay down a federal legislative framework made up of two laws: the “John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act” and the “Freedom to vote Act”.
“Confiscation”
The Republicans are united against these projects, seen as a coup by Washington against the powers of the states.
“It’s a confiscation of power. I will oppose it with all my being, ”Conservative Senator Lindsey Graham has already promised.
These two laws, however, must pass the hurdle of the US Senate, which normally requires 60 votes. But Democrats have 51 and Republicans have 50.
It is nevertheless possible to break this lock, known as “filibuster” in American parliamentary jargon.
But parliamentary maneuver requires perfect discipline from Democratic senators, which is far from being established. Joe Biden knows this well, he who had to give up a huge program of progressive social reforms because of a single Democratic senator, Joe Manchin.
This elected official from West Virginia is now reluctant to follow the parliamentary path traced by the Democrats on “voting rights”.
And time is running out for Joe Biden: he risks losing his slim parliamentary majority this fall in mid-term elections historically unfavorable to the government in power, and that he approaches with anemic confidence rating.
The American president, who benefited during his campaign from the support considered decisive of the African-American electorate, is therefore expected at the turn by the activists.
“It will be a joke if we get to the Martin Luther King Memorial Holiday,” meaning January 17, “without their having been able to pass the access legislation through the Senate. to vote, ”warns Cliff Albright, co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund, which campaigns to increase the voter turnout of African Americans in Georgia.