‘Where is the president?’ The fight for voting rights is running out of time. Advocates want Biden to step up

Biden suggests protecting the right to vote is one of the defining battles of his time. Democrats are running out of it, and activists need help from the White House, writes Alex Woodward

(REUTERS)

A myth that Democrats and the “deep state” conspired to not only steal an election from Donald Trump, and then deliberately disarmed police protecting the Capitol from the mob that believed it, permeates a party that has propped up election lies behind a wave of restrictive voting bills across the US.

That’s the party that many congressional Democrats believe can still, somehow, get behind protecting voting rights, or infrastructure spending, or combatting the climate crisis, or other measures critical to their agenda – which Republicans have pledged to destroy before demolishing their opponents in midterm elections next year.

Republicans have accused Democrats of staging a “takeover” and “power grab” of elections – while GOP lawmakers in nearly every state have filed dozens of bills to give themselves the authority to control them, and then filibuster voting rights bills to death in the Senate.