Congressional Black Caucus Holds News Conference on Voting Rights
Watch live as Chairwoman Joyce Beatty of the Congressional Black Caucus holds a news conference on voting rights from Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2022. President Joe Biden called on the U.S. Senate to change its rules to allow a simple majority to pass voting rights legislation, saying in Atlanta that GOP-backed state laws threaten democracy. “The threat to our democracy so grave, we must find a way to pass these voting rights bills, debate them, vote,” Biden said Tuesday at Morehouse College, after visiting the crypt of Martin Luther King Jr. and the church where he was a pastor, Ebenezer Baptist. “Let the majority prevail.” His visit came amid a growing backlash from voting-rights advocates who accused the president of leaving the issue on the back burner until now to focus on his economic agenda. Some activists released an open letter dismissing his appearance as “an empty gesture, without concrete action,” while the Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams skipped events Tuesday with Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Yes, tragic alignment, and still subject to the 15th Amendment, passed by Congress Feb. 26, 1869 and ratified Feb. 3, 1870: a renewable Voting Rights amendment granting African American males voting rights. After many Southern states passed laws to still disenfranchise us, President Lyndon B. Johnson urged passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, extended in 1970, 1975, 1982, and 2006. In 2013, Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Act, removing federal oversight of voting rules in 9 states that had historically had exclusionary/discriminatory rules and practices. Recently, the conservatives on Supreme Court granted states the right to justify restrictive changes in elections by raising, without proof, concerns over voting fraud. Women did not get the right to vote until ratification of the 19th Amendment on August 18, 1920.” To read more go to the link below:
