President of the United States Joe Biden is expected to signal that he is willing to consider backing changes to the rules of the US Senate to facilitate the passing of new voting rights legislation aimed at tackling restrictions introduced by a number of states across the country.
It is anticipated that Mr Biden and vice-president Kamala Harris will stress the urgent need to pass legislation to protect the constitutional right to vote as well as the integrity of elections when they travel to Georgia on Tuesday.
Two pieces of voting rights legislation that have been passed by the House of Representatives are currently stalled in the US senate as they do not have the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster by Republicans who are opposed to the proposed measures.
The Brennan Center for Justice, a law and policy institute, has maintained that between January 1st and December 7th last year, at least 19 states with Republican majorities passed 34 laws restricting access to voting.
The issue is of major importance to Democrats as they seek to maintain their slender hold on both houses of Congress in the elections later this year.
Democrats say these new state laws will make it harder for minorities to participate in elections. The move has led to pressure on the Democrats to either end the filibuster rule or to introduce an exemption for voting rights legislation.
Republicans have argued that voting rights are not genuinely in jeopardy and the whole issue is really a smokescreen to break Senate traditions and allows the Democrats to push through a raft of liberal policies .
There are also concerns among some Democrats that changing the filibuster rules could facilitate Republicans forcing through controversial measures of their own on a simple majority basis if and when they ever re-took control of the Senate.
Resistance
Changing the filibuster rule is being resisted by two key moderate Democratic senators. It is also strongly opposed by Republicans.
The White House said on Tuesday that Mr Biden planned to sign voting rights legislation into law. However, it said this would require a majority of senators to support it, "even if there are changes to the Senate rules, which is something the president has expressed an openness to".
The White House said the president would “forcefully advocate for protecting the most bedrock American right: the right to vote and have your voice counted in a free, fair and secure election that is not tainted by partisan manipulation”.
"He'll make clear, in the former district of the late Congressman John Lewis [in Georgia], that the only way to do that are for the senate to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act."
The White House said the president maintained that this is “one of the rare moments in a country’s history when time stops and the essential is immediately ripped away from the trivial, and that we have to ensure January 6th [the attack on the US Capitol last year by supporters of former president Donald Trump] doesn’t mark the end of democracy but the beginning of a renaissance for our democracy where we stand up for the right to vote and have that vote counted fairly, not undermined by partisans afraid of who you voted for or try to reverse an outcome”.
