Michael Cardinal, FISM News
From the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Biden used strong hyperbole to decry conservative voting reform laws that have been passed in 17 Republican-led states.
He used one of the Democrats’ most recently used tag lines, calling voter integrity legislation the “new Jim Crow laws.” However, he then took it a step further by declaring that the country was “facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War.”
Biden’s impassioned speech seemed set to purposefully stir up an already volatile American public, painting conservatives who desire to ensure a fair election as “un-patriotic” and “suppressive,” but his choice of imagery didn’t stop there. He also sought to shame those on the right as racist. For a president whose inauguration speech focused on unity, this speech contained extremely divisive language.
According to a recent poll, American’s overwhelmingly support voter ID laws which is one of the central tenets of Republican backed voter integrity legislation. 80% of those surveyed support mandating IDs to vote. With this being the case, Biden has in essence likened the majority of American citizens to the Confederacy.
NATIONAL POLL: 80% support requiring photo ID to vote, but 71% also want in-person early voting to be easier.
50% want to make vote-by-mail easier; 39% want it to be harder.
69% support national guidelines for early voting and #VBM.#votingrightshttps://t.co/2ZZbD8whKy
— MonmouthPoll (@MonmouthPoll) June 21, 2021
Taking measures to ensure safe and fair elections is not an assault on democracy, rather, it is at the center of supporting a democracy. Biden has not given any facts that support the validity of his concerns. Instead he has mounted a partisan fear-mongering campaign. He essentially admitted this tactic when he spoke about the Capitol riots in the same speech, saying, “I’m not saying this to alarm you; I’m saying this because you should be alarmed.”
The facts are that all American citizens have the right to vote, and all citizens who are not able to get to the polls are able to request a mail in ballot. Republicans assert that the reason these voter integrity laws are necessary is because of the massive way that the elections changed due to pandemic measures.
HR.1, the Democrats version of voting reform, is a bill that desires to implant revisions to elections that will benefit the Democratic party and ensure their victory in future elections. According to the National Review, this bill “would force states to count mail-in votes that arrive up to ten days after Election Day; compel them to legalize ballot harvesting; ban them from having voter-ID laws; empower bureaucrats to redraw congressional districts; require states to allow felons to vote; undermine free-speech rights by imposing a new array of burdens on civic groups, unions, and nonprofit organizations; force states to count ballots cast by voters who are in the wrong precincts; prohibit election officials from reviewing eligibility of voters; and bar officials from removing ineligible voters from the rolls.”
It appears that this sweeping liberal bill is important enough to Biden that he is willing to call those who oppose it, to be more of a threat to American democracy than the Nazis, al-Qaeda, or countless other forces who have desired to destroy our country.
Watch the full speech here: