Luther King III did not expressly mention the Republicans at any point in his speech, although he criticized the measures they have adopted.
the activist Martin Luther King III, son of Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), urged the country’s president, Joe Biden, and the Senate on Monday to act to pass legislation that protects the right to vote to shield it from Republican attempts to restrict it.
“I am here to urge President Biden and the Senate to pass the ‘John R Lewis Free Voting Act’ and to advise that our democracy is on the brink of serious trouble,” said Luther King III., in a speech from Union Station, the main train station in the US, on the occasion of Martin Luther King Day.
The activist recalled that his mother used to say that a holiday should be a day to be working, not to be idle: “Today we are not here to celebrate, but to be active.”
He stressed that the Congresses of 19 states have approved 34 laws that restrict the right of citizens to vote, such as in Georgia, where the King family resides, that “are designed to confuse voters.”
In that sense, he explained that voters have been removed from the lists, so that when they go to vote they find out that they are not on the register to vote, and that the number of polling stations and the time to do so have been limited. “These laws are passed with the precision of a knife to cut black and Latino voters out of the process,” said Luther King III.
The son of the Reverend Luther King Jr. did not expressly mention the Republicans at any point in his speech, although criticized the measures that have been adopted, for being the ones who are approving legislation in the states they control to restrict the right to vote.
To curb those restrictions, Democrats are trying carry out two projects, the so-called “Freedom to Vote Act” and the “John Lewis Electoral Rights Promotion Act”, which has little prospect of succeeding in the Upper House due to the slim majority available to the progressives.
The first initiative establishes minimum federal requirements for voting early and by mail, while the second restores Justice Department oversight of any changes to voting laws in states that have a history of discrimination.
On Thursday, the Lower House, with a Democratic majority, approved a project that combines the two legislative initiatives and the text now goes to the Senate, which could begin to debate it tomorrow.
However, the legislative draft has little expectation of going ahead in the Upper House, due to a maneuver called filibusterism, which makes it possible to prevent the debate of any measure if a majority of 60 votes is not gathered in the Senate.
In this situation, Biden has been in favor of modifying the rules of that chamber to get rid of “filibustering”, but two Democratic senators, Kyrsten Sinema, of Arizona, and Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, have already expressed their disagreement with changing them, despite expressing their support for the projects to protect the vote.
Thus, Luther King III made mention in his speech of “filibustering” and of Sinema and Manchin.
In that sense, he lamented that the state legislatures can approve regulations that limit the right to vote, while the country’s Senate cannot do anything because of “a small technicality called filibustering.”
He recalled that this maneuver was used in the past to not pass laws that would protect civil rights for a hundred years after the Civil War (1861-1865). (I)
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