Category Archives: US voting rights

Democrats seek way forward after voting rights bill hits Senate roadblock

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The White House warned democracy was ‘in peril’ but while key Democrats stay committed to the filibuster, progress looks difficult

After nearly six months of watching Republicans relentlessly make it harder to vote in the US, Democrats suffered a major blow on Tuesday after GOP senators used a legislative maneuver to halt a sweeping voting rights and ethics bill.

The vote doesn’t kill the bill, but it marks one of the most significant setbacks for Democrats in Joe Biden’s presidency so far. Democrats heralded the legislation as their No 1 priority, even knowing they were unlikely to get any Republican votes for it. The bill would amount to the most significant expansion of the right to vote in a generation, requiring early voting and automatic and same-day registration, while prohibiting excessive manipulation of electoral district boundaries, a process often called gerrymandering.

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Democrats present united front in For the People Act vote – video

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Democrats demonstrated unity in the US senate as the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin said he would vote in favor of advancing voting rights legislation known as the For the People act to the debate stage.

The Republican Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, denied any voter suppression was happening despite around 400 bills introduced in more than 43 states which could restrict the right to vote. The legislation would remove hurdles to voting.

In the evenly split Senate, Republican votes mean the bill will not garner the necessary 60 votes to advance.

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Republicans set to sink Democrats’ effort to advance key voting rights bill – live

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Good morning, live blog readers. Yesterday may have been the longest day of the year but today may feel longer for Democrats as tension builds in Washington towards the big vote on whether to advance legislation on massive voting rights reforms. It’s going to be a lively day, so let’s get started.

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Joe Manchin to face critics in meeting with Black civil rights leaders on voting – live

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Vice-President Kamala Harris, who has been taking some criticism for her blunt speech in Guatemala to Central American migrants to “do not come” to US, is now getting some backlash from Republicans for an NBC interview she did on this same trip.

Reminder: Joe Biden tasked Harris in March with efforts to stem migration at the US-Mexican border. On her first foreign trip, NBC’s Lester Holt asked if she had any plans to visit the border.

“We have to deal with what's happening at the border.”@VP Kamala Harris spoke exclusively with @LesterHoltNBC on her first trip overseas, how the administration is addressing the immigration crisis, and if she plans to visit the southern border herself. pic.twitter.com/sA4We7peeR

LESTER HOLT: You haven't been to the border.

KAMALA HARRIS: And I haven't been to Europe. pic.twitter.com/Vj6M261Nx3

Vice-President Kamala Harris is in Mexico now, meeting with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

President Lopez Obrador shows Vice President Harris a Diego Rivera mural at the national palace. Asked if he will do more about border enforcement, Lopez Obrador said “We will touch on that subject but always addressing the fundamental root causes” pic.twitter.com/URiJdWaUM9

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Biden trumpets democracy abroad in Post op-ed – as threats spread at home

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Joe Biden will use his visit to Europe this week to “rally the world’s democracies” in a reset of US foreign policy after four turbulent years under Donald Trump – all while threats to American democracy, stoked by Trump, proliferate at home.

Related: After Trump: Biden set to outline US policy to Johnson, Putin and more

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Texas Republicans plot to resurrect restrictive voting bill after Democrats’ walkout

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Governor Greg Abbott plans to call special session after Democrats block 11th-hour attempt to ram through bill to make voting harder

Republicans in Texas are already plotting to resurrect their fight for sweeping voting restrictions after Democratic lawmakers walked out of the state capitol and blocked an 11th-hour attempt to ram through legislation that would have made it harder to cast a ballot.

Texas governor Greg Abbott – who leads the state’s domineering Republican majority – has announced he will include the high-stakes issue on his agenda when he reconvenes the legislature for a rapid-fire special session. He called the failure of the bill “deeply disappointing”.

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Texas Democrats’ late-night walkout scuppers Republican efforts to restrict voting rights

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SB7 bill that would introduce restrictions making it harder to vote fails to pass before midnight deadline after Democrats leave House

Texas Republican have failed in their efforts to push through one of the most restrictive voting measures in the US after Democrats walked out of the House at the last minute, leaving the bill languishing ahead of a midnight deadline.

The exodus came at the instruction of Chris Turner, the House Democratic chairman, who told colleagues at 10.35pm to “take your key and leave the chamber discreetly”, referring to the key that locks the voting mechanism on their desks, the Washington Post reported.

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‘A ticking timebomb’: Democrats’ push for voting rights law faces tortuous path

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Democrats have yet to convince their entire Senate caucus to back the House-passed For the People Act – let alone beat the filibuster

After six months of aggressive Republican efforts to restrict voting access, Democrats are facing new questions about how they will actually pass voting rights reforms through Congress.

The most recent hand-wringing comes as Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democratic senator, made clear earlier this month he still is not on board with the For the People Act, which would require early voting, automatic and same-day registration, and prevent the severe manipulation of district boundaries for partisan gain.

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‘It can’t be that easy’: US conservative group brags about role in making voting harder

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Leaked video published by Mother Jones shows executive director of Heritage Action bragging about crafting voting restriction bills

A top official at one of America’s most influential conservative groups bragged about playing a key role in crafting voting restrictions across the country, according to leaked video published by Documented, a watchdog group, and Mother Jones on Thursday.

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Florida ‘moving in wrong direction’ with voting restrictions, White House says – as it happened

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Mike Jordan reports for the Guardian:

Idaho’s governor, Brad Little, has a bill signed into law that aims to restrict critical race theory from being taught as a subject in schools and universities.

The bill, H377, prevents teachers from “indoctrinating” students into belief systems that claim that members of any race, sex, religion, ethnicity or national origin are inferior or superior to other groups. Signed into law last week, H377 also makes it illegal to make students “affirm, adopt or adhere to” beliefs that members of these groups are today responsible for past actions of the groups to which they claim to belong.

Related: Idaho governor signs bill to ban critical race theory from being taught in schools

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Fight to vote: why US democracy is at a tipping point – video

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The new Georgia voting rights law makes it harder to vote, especially for communities that tend to vote for Democrats – and that's what Republicans want. But it's not just Georgia: these restrictive voting laws are being considered in nearly every state in America, from Arizona to Texas to Florida.

These efforts come on the heels of the 2020 presidential election, which Republicans lost by slim margins in several states. Many Republicans claimed they lost because of voter fraud – because people who were ineligible to vote found a way to skirt the rules and cast ballots. Election officials around the nation said there was no widespread fraud, but Republicans are using this argument to push for a wide array of laws that will skew election in their favor.

If enacted, Americans will have to ask a hard question: is the US still a democracy?

Alvin Chang and Sam Levine explain this Republican effort to suppress voting rights as part of the Guardian's Fight to Vote series

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Georgia corporations tried to interfere with our democracy. We didn’t let them | Nsé Ufot

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When Coca-Cola and Delta backed bigoted lawmakers, we organized, rose up, used our voices to make change – and it worked

In the last general election, Georgians delivered our country from the hands of fascism by securing Democrats in the White House and the Senate. As payback for doing so, Republicans are waging an unholy war against voting rights in the state, pushing Jim Crow-style measures like SB 202 into law, which will make it harder for hundreds of thousands of Georgians to cast their ballots. This dangerous bill impacts specific communities the most: Black, brown, young, and new voters in Georgia.

Many voters don’t know that Republicans aren’t working alone to disenfranchise us. Their accomplices were some of the most powerful corporations in our state. In fact, Georgia-based companies like Delta, Coca-Cola and Home Depot previously bankrolled the backers of voter suppression bills to the tune of over $7.4m.

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Warnock urges Biden to prioritize fight against voter suppression

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Georgia senator tells president ‘We have to pass voting rights no matter what’ after restrictions signed into law by state’s governor

The Georgia Democratic senator the Rev Raphael Warnock delivered a challenge to Joe Biden on Sunday to prioritize the fight against voter suppression, telling the US president: “We have to pass voting rights no matter what.”

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‘Jim Crow in the 21st century’: Biden denounces Georgia Republicans over new voting law

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President says new law represents ‘blatant attack on the constitution’ as voting rights activists vow to keep up the fight

Joe Biden lambasted a new law in Georgia that imposes sweeping new voting restrictions, calling it “un-American” and “Jim Crow in the 21st century”.

He said in a statement: “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. This law, like so many others being pursued by Republicans in statehouses across the country, is a blatant attack on the constitution and good conscience.”

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Landmark US bill to ‘stop voter suppression’ passes first hurdle in House

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Voting legislation, which also targets gerrymandering and campaign finance, needs 60 votes in Senate to become law

House Democrats have passed sweeping voting and ethics legislation over unanimous Republican opposition, advancing to the Senate what would be the largest overhaul of the US election law in at least a generation.

House Resolution 1, which touches on virtually every aspect of the electoral process, was approved 220-210. It would restrict partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts, strike down hurdles to voting and bring transparency to a murky campaign finance system that allows wealthy donors to anonymously bankroll political causes.

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Counted out: Trump’s desperate fight to stop the minority vote

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How Republicans applied old school racism to new demographics, and lost

In March 1965, ABC interrupted a showing of its Sunday-night movie – Judgment at Nuremberg, a courtroom drama about Nazi war crimes – to show shocking footage from Selma, Alabama, where mostly Black protesters were being beaten bloody by mounted police with billy clubs as they tried to cross Edmund Pettus bridge into the city, demanding the right to vote.

John Lewis, then just 25 years old, led the way. “I can’t count the number of marches I have participated in in my lifetime, but there was something peculiar about this one,” he wrote in his memoir, Walking With the Wind. “It was more than disciplined. It was somber and subdued, almost like a funeral procession.”

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A history of voter suppression in Georgia – in pictures

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Ever since the 15th amendment granted Black men the right to vote, southern states have found myriad ways to walk back this basic tenet of democracy. From white primaries to poll taxes, to literacy tests and recent voter roll purges, voter suppression has always been a defining characteristic of American elections. As part of her photo project Let The Record Show, Roopa Gogineni spent time at the Atlanta History Center and the Georgia Archives photographing documents and objects to chronicle the centuries-long struggle for the right to vote in the state of Georgia

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How Covid is accelerating the fight for Black voting rights in the US – video

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Donald Trump’s election campaign in 2016 targeted nearly 3.5 million Black Americans to deter them from voting, and the battle for the right to vote is just as important in 2020. Kenya Evelyn travels to Florida where it's the Democrats' most loyal bloc, Black women, who are also bearing the brunt of the coronavirus outbreak, with its impact accelerating the fight for voting rights. From mail-in ballots and early voting, to felon disenfranchisement, Black voters are wielding their power to demand more from Democrats ahead of November


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The US supreme court ruled against my voting rights. As an ex-felon, my scarlet letter is back | Raquel Wright

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The supreme court ruled in favor of Florida Republicans trying to take away the voting rights of people with felony convictions. We will continue to fight this

This month, the supreme court ruled in favor of Florida Republicans in their quest to take away the voting rights of people with felony convictions – people like me.

Related: San Francisco could soon allow 16-year-olds to vote. The country should follow | Isabel Hope

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Is democracy in America under threat? – podcast

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As the US election draws closer, the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington hears from civil leaders on their fears for the integrity of the process and the future of their democracy

When Barack Obama spoke at the Democratic national convention recently he had as his backdrop a facsimile of the US constitution. He spoke pointedly about the importance of that document and criticised Donald Trump, a reality TV star who had damaged the reputation of the United States with “our democratic institutions threatened like never before”.

It is a concern shared by many across the US and the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington tells Anushka Asthana that he was alarmed by what he heard in interviews with some of the most prominent figures in civil rights, the law and academia on the state of democracy in America. He spoke to Michael Waldman, the head of the Brennan Center for Justice; Derrick Johnson, the president of the NAACP; Deirdre Schifeling, the campaign director of Democracy For All 2021; K. Sabeel Rahman, the head of Demos, and Vanita Gupta, the president and chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. All told him versions of the same story: democracy in America is in peril like never before.

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