President Joe Biden is again calling on Congress to pass election reform legislation in response to a bill signed into law in Georgia that restricts voting in the state.
The Republican-sponsored overhaul of Georgia’s elections places new restrictions on voting by mail and establishes greater legislative oversight on the electoral process, among other things.
Other states with GOP-controlled legislatures are considering similar measures in response to the 2020 election that saw Democrats regain control of the Senate and the White House. Some Republicans, led by former President Donald Trump, have stoked false claims that fraud led to their overall defeat.
In a statement responding to the Georgia legislation, Biden referenced the many court cases that upheld the integrity and outcome of the 2020 election and the runoffs election in the Peach State.
“Yet instead of celebrating the rights of all Georgians to vote or winning campaigns on the merits of their ideas, Republicans in the state instead rushed through an un-American law to deny people the right to vote,” wrote Biden.
Biden called the Georgia legislation “a blatant attack on the Constitution” and pointed out some parts of the law he called “outrageous.”
“… it ends voting hours early so working people can’t cast their vote after their shift is over,” said Biden. “It adds rigid restrictions on casting absentee ballots that will effectively deny the right to vote to countless voters. And it makes it a crime to provide water to voters while they wait in line – lines Republican officials themselves have created by reducing the number of polling sites across the state, disproportionately in Black neighborhoods.”
Biden went on to say lawmakers have a moral and Constitutional obligation to act.
“This is Jim Crow in the 21st Century. It must end,” he wrote.
The president ended his statement by again calling on Congress to pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which Democrats say will make it easier for all eligible Americans to access ballot boxes and prevent attacks on the right to vote.
“And I will take my case to the American people – including Republicans who joined the broadest coalition of voters ever in this past election to put country before party,” said Biden. “If you have the best ideas, you have nothing to hide. Let the people vote.”
