President, VP To Visit Atlanta To Discuss Voting Rights In Home of John Lewis

ATLANTA, GA – President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Atlanta next Tuesday, Jan. 11, to promote the administration’s voting rights legislation.

The White House touts the visit as an opportunity “to speak to the American people about the urgent need to pass legislation to protect the constitutional right to vote and the integrity of our elections from corrupt attempts to strip law-abiding citizens of their fundamental freedoms and allow partisan state officials to undermine vote counting processes.”

And the conversation will take place with the backdrop of Atlanta, the home of the late namesake of one of the two bills now stalled in the Congress, the U.S. Rep. John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

The Lewis bill, which passed the House in August, would reactivate federal preclearance giving the Justice Department oversight in cases where the history or evidence of discrimination in a certain state suppressing voting rights with an eye to challenging restrictive laws in states such as Georgia, Florida or Texas.

A second bill, the For the People Act passed the House in March, calls for same-day election-day voter registration, expansion of mail-in and early voting, campaign finance regulation, making election day a federal holiday, and a national election security strategy.

But the Democrats’ 1-vote majority in the Senate – which Harris holds as the tie-break in a Senate split 50-50 – is not enough to prevent the filibuster that Republicans have used to stymie even discussion of the bills.

To that end, a coalition of voting rights advocates have asked what’s the point of the president and vice president coming to discuss the issue without being able to point to a concrete strategy to end the impasse and pass the bills in the Senate, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

“Such an empty gesture, without concrete action, without signs of real, tangible work, is unacceptable,” a joint statement penned by members of Black Voters Matter Fund, the Asian American Advocacy Fund, the New Georgia Project Action Fund,and the GALEO Impact Action Fund, an organization representing Latinos.

Patch will report on more details about the presidential visit to Atlanta, including where Biden and Harris will go, what happens during the trip and how that will impact Metro traffic, and the question of the two voting bills now influx, as they come available.