“The right to vote, to have your vote counted is the threshold of democracy and liberty,” President Joe Biden said Sunday as he stood on Selma, Alabama’s Edmund Pettus Bridge to honor the 58th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday.”
Bloody Sunday honors a historic march on March 7, 1965, when 600 primarily Black protestors were brutally attacked by a white police mob who beat them with billy clubs and sprayed them with tear gas, according to Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture.
“This fundamental right remains under assault. Conservative Supreme Court has gutted the Voting Rights Act over the years. Since the 2020 election, a wave of states (has passed) dozens, dozens of anti-voting laws fueled by the big lie,” Biden continued.
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Democrats are embroiled in a battle with the Republican-led House of Representatives to get the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act passed, and Biden doubled down on the pressure, saying, “I’ve made it clear: I will not let a filibuster obstruct the sacred right to vote.”
CNN reports that Biden was joined by civil rights leaders and politicians, including Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge, House Assistant Democratic Leader Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, and Alabama Rep. Terri Sewell representing Selma. The president then joined in on the annual walk across the infamous bridge.
One tool in the conservative war on voting and the continued fight against misinformation was the creation of the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a consortium of over 30 states protecting voter rolls, according to The Washington Post.
Now, ERIC has come under threat after critics claimed that the center is tainted, alleging it feeds Democratic organizations and enables fraud. Republican-led states are backing away from it.
David Becker, who helped found ERIC in 2012 with seven states when he led the elections program at the Pew Charitable Trusts, tells the Post, “Why would people who purport to want more election integrity seek to damage the best tool out there … The only thing I can come up with is they don’t actually want election integrity. They want more chaos.”
ERIC is designed for Democratic and Republican states alike to share voting data and keep illegal voting in check. In 2022, 34 states joined the consortium. But after the midterms, between former President Donald Trump’s unrelenting allegations of voter fraud, ERIC fell prey to conspiracy theories claiming it was backed by George Soros. The consortium is funded exclusively by taxpayers in the states involved, the Post reports.
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Yes, electing the president by popular vote is possible! Joining us on The Downballot is former Vermont legislator Christopher Pearson, an official with National Popular Vote, the organization advocating for states to adopt a compact that would award their electoral votes to the presidential candidate who gets the most votes nationwide. Pearson walks us through the mechanics of the compact, debunks some common misconceptions, and lays out future steps toward hitting the required 270 electoral votes for the agreement to come into force.