Joe Biden promised to push for reforms within his first 100 days in office that would allow the federal government to conduct oversight of how some jurisdictions with track records of voter discrimination conduct their elections.
The former vice president was asked at the 2019 National Urban League Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana, to commit to introducing, passing, and signing a Voting Rights Act amendment bill that would roll-back certain voter suppression measures and restore the preclearance provision should he win the Democratic presidential nomination and White House next year.
“Absolutely, positively, I can guarantee we’ll have it introduced, I guarantee I’ll sign it as passed, and I guarantee I’ll work like hell to make sure it passes,” Biden said Thursday.
While Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday blocked consideration of what the Kentucky Republican described as two “highly partisan” election security bills after special counsel Robert Mueller’s warning this week that the nation’s democracy was still “more vulnerable” than it should be, House Democrats proposed their version of the Voting Rights Advancement Act, or the VRAA, in February.
The VRAA aims to repair the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its preclearance stipulations, which were struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013 via Shelby vs. Holder. In that case, a majority of justices ruled that the criteria used to determine which states or counties needed to preclear their election law changes with the federal government was outdated and, therefore, unconstitutional.
The VRAA, if passed by the GOP-controlled Senate and signed by President Trump, would require 11 states and dozens of counties with recent histories of voter discrimination to receive approval from the Justice Department before making any modifications to how their elections are run.
Cory Booker, who addressed the National Urban League Conference earlier Thursday, made the same pro-preclearance pledge, asserting that states like Texas and Georgia would be blue states “if you look at the demographics.”
“One of my purposes as president will be to make sure that we, really, infuse our democracy with more democracy,” the senator for New Jersey said, adding he would make Election Day a national holiday and implement automatic registration. “And as we saw yesterday from the Mueller hearing, we also need to make sure that we not just protecting the ballot from voter suppression domestically, but from all the voter interference that we see the Russians doing as well.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, two other White House hopefuls who appeared at the conference, also took the same vow.
