These reforms are accused by civil rights defense associations of complicating access to the ballot boxes for minorities, considered to be more favorable to Democrats, while strengthening the grip of local authorities over voting operations.
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The displacement is symbolically heavy and politically explosive. Joe Biden arrived Tuesday January 11 in the state of Georgia to promise to protect at all costs the exercise of the right to vote by African-Americans, threatened according to him by the conservative states of the south of the country. It is in this context that the American president said he would support, if necessary, a high-risk change in Senate rules “to prevent a minority of senators from blocking” this vast reform on the right to vote of minorities.
“I’m tired of being silent” faced with the blockade by the Republican opposition of two crucial bills, the American president was carried away from Atlanta, speaking of a “turning point in American history” and ensuring that “every member of the Senate would be judged by history”. For her part, Vice-President Kamala Harris had previously warned against any “complacency” Where “complicity” faced with the electoral reforms decided or planned in several conservative states in the southern United States.
These reforms are accused by civil rights defense associations of complicating access to the ballot boxes for minorities, considered to be more favorable to Democrats, while strengthening the grip of local authorities over voting operations. To counter them, the Democrats want to adopt two pieces of legislation harmonizing the conditions for exercising the right to vote in the United States.
But they come up against a rule of the Senate, known as “filibuster”, which requires 60 votes out of 100, where the presidential majority has only 50 and can tip the scales in its favor thanks to the decisive vote of the vice-president Kamala Harris.
Only, it seems impossible to recruit a single Republican, because the Conservative Party is largely won over to Donald Trump and his unfounded arguments on massive fraud during the last presidential election and he rejects the reform outright. Democrats must therefore find a way to get around this so-called “filibuster” rule.