Joe Biden said he was “deeply disappointed” on Wednesday that the US Senate buried his electoral reform with which the president promised to protect access to the ballot box for African-Americans.
US senators inflicted a stinging setback on the Democratic leader by refusing to move forward on this text.
Ten months before the mid-term legislative elections, Joe Biden wanted with this reform to lay down a federal framework for the organization of the polls in the United States.
And in doing so, cancel a series of restrictions adopted in fifteen conservative states since the 2020 presidential election.
According to NGOs, these restrictions deliberately discriminate against black voters, the majority who voted for Joe Biden in the last election.
In Republican states, on the contrary, it is assured that these measures strengthen the security of the country’s polls, a strong argument with their voters, many of whom still believe that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from Donald Trump.
The organization of elections is more than ever a hot topic in America.
Democrats in the Senate were desperate to pass Joe Biden’s big electoral reform to undo those measures before the midterm elections.
But the Republican opposition, standing against this law which, according to it, would entrust the Democrats with control of the polls across the country, united on Wednesday evening.
It thus deprived the Democrats of the “supermajority” of 60 votes required in the Senate to close the debates and submit the text to the vote.
In a final attempt, the Democratic staff tried to push the text with its only votes via a so-called “nuclear” option, but which the most moderate of this camp, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, opposed.
“I am deeply disappointed that the Senate has failed to defend our democracy”, reacted Joe Biden just after the vote.
“I am disappointed – but I am not discouraged,” he said on Twitter, assuring that he would not relax his efforts on this file.
During his press conference a few hours before the vote, the American president had also stressed that he had not “exhausted all options” to protect access to the vote for African-Americans, without giving more details.