Biden to order voter registration effort as ballot battle heats up

Joe Biden will on Sunday sign an executive order intended to boost voter registration, days after the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives passed a sweeping voting rights law to counteract Republican efforts to restrict ballot access in several states.

Biden’s unilateral action will direct federal agencies to promote voter registration and participation, and to work with states to help register voters.

The order will also direct federal authorities to overhaul the vote.gov website, ensure federal employees are given time off work to vote or volunteer as poll workers, and provide more resources to make sure people with disabilities, active duty military and other overseas voters, and Native Americans have opportunities to register to vote.

It is the latest attempt by Democrats to counter Republican efforts to clamp down on early voting, voting by mail and other voting practices after Donald Trump refused to accept the results of November’s election and falsely claimed, repeatedly, that the ballots had been “rigged” against him.

But the order also underscores how little the president can do on his own, and how much the political battle over voting rights will be fought on Capitol Hill and in state legislatures.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, state lawmakers have this year introduced more than 250 bills with provisions that would restrict voting access in 43 states. Among them is a bill in the key swing state of Georgia that would outlaw early voting on Sundays, a move critics say is a thinly veiled attack on African-American voters who have historically voted through church-related “souls to the polls” events.

Biden’s executive order comes less than a week after the US House of Representatives, which is controlled by Democrats, passed sweeping legislation to protect voting rights and counteract some of the state proposals. The House bill includes provisions for automatic voter registration, a requirement that states guarantee a window for early voting and allow mail-in ballots, and the restoration of voting rights for felons who have completed their sentences.

But the House bill is likely to stall in the US Senate, which Democrats control by the smallest of margins. The upper chamber of Congress is split, 50-50, between Democrats and Republicans, with vice-president Kamala Harris able to cast a tie-breaking vote. However, under arcane Senate “filibuster” rules, debate on most legislation — including that relating to voting rights and elections — needs the support of 60 senators, something that is unlikely to happen in the current Congress.

Progressive activists and Democratic lawmakers have in recent weeks rallied for Democratic senators to consider scrapping the filibuster altogether, something that can be done with a simple majority vote. Biden, who spent 36 years in the Senate before serving as Barack Obama’s vice-president, has remained lukewarm on the filibuster issue, after defending the rule for decades.

Biden will announce the voting access executive order on Sunday at an event commemorating the 56th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday”, when state troopers beat and tear-gassed hundreds of civil rights protesters in Selma, Alabama, including John Lewis. Lewis, who died last year, went on to be a prominent voice in the civil rights movement and a longtime Democratic congressman from Georgia.

The US Supreme Court in 2013 invalidated key parts of the Voting Rights Act, a landmark piece of legislation signed by Lyndon B Johnson in the wake of Bloody Sunday. Democrats, including Biden, have called for the restoration of the law in Lewis’s name.