Politics- Black Democrats who helped
Joe Biden win are frustrated with the lack of progress onvoting rights . - Despite having the White House and
Congress , Democrats failed to pass federal voting rights laws.
As the midterms approach, Black Democrats who supported Joe Biden during the 2020 election are increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress on protecting voting access, one of the president's main promises during his presidential campaign.
More than a year into his presidency and a Democratic monopoly of Congress, the Biden administration has yet to turn a major piece of voting rights legislation into law, despite ballot access being a major concern for the Democratic Party, particularly its
Steve Phillips, a co-founder of the media and political group Democracy in Color, said the Biden administration was doing "very" poorly.
"They're basically not doing anything about defending democracy and the right to vote," Phillips said.
For Black activists, it makes little sense that Biden's government trifecta has so far not yielded results on voting rights.
"You kind of wonder, well, we got the White House. We got the House. We got the
Black voters, who throughout US history have faced disproportionate obstacles to voting including poll taxes, violent intimidation, and outright bans, have for the past several decades reliably voted Democratic. South Carolina's Black Democrats voted overwhelmingly for Biden during the 2020 primary season, and are credited with delivering a victory that resuscitated Biden's campaign and set him on his ultimate path to the White House.
Biden's campaign website included a lengthy policy memo titled "Lift every voice: The Biden plan for Black America". Biden's plan included restoring sections of the Voting Rights Act that were invalidated by the Supreme Court in 2013, making it easier to vote by allowing same-day voter registration, and incentivizing states to restore voting rights to people who committed felonies after they have served their sentence.
Those promises have not come to fruition at the federal level, however. Democrats had pinned their hopes on two bills, the Freedom to Vote Act and The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. In January, Biden and congressional Democrats suffered a humiliating defeat on voting rights as two members of their own party —
Voting rights restrictions in conservative states
Since Donald Trump's defeat in 2020, Republican-controlled states like Texas and Georgia have passed new voting restrictions in the name of protecting election integrity. But Democratic activists say those laws are actually designed to curb access for voters of color and give Republicans more power over election administration.
"There's a frustration in the Black community that people generally don't understand, or seem to not understand, the right to vote, particularly Republicans," Lottie Shackelford, a Democratic National Committee member and former mayor of Little Rock, Arkansas, told Insider. "They don't understand the importance of voting, having fair laws to vote under. That just destroys everyone. That's important to us."
"There's frustration there, but not so much at the president," Shackelford said. "They just want to make sure the president always does everything in his power to help promote voting rights for everyone."
Phillips of Democracy in Color said that he'd like to see Biden using his bully pulpit to "lead a crusade for democracy," and encourage voting through means other than congressional legislation. He said the administration should seek creative avenues, like encouraging colleges and high schools to register as many eligible students as possible, or working with corporations to create public pressure against states that passed voting restrictions.
The concerns that some Black activists have with the Biden administration broke out into the open in January, when Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Atlanta for a rally in support of the Democrats' legislation that was later defeated. Civil rights leaders, including Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton, attended the speech.
But more than half-a-dozen voting rights groups boycotted the event, according to the Washington Post, arguing Biden needed to prioritize getting results over making speeches.
"We don't need even more photo ops. We need action, and that action is in the form of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act as well as the Freedom to Vote Act, and we need that immediately," said Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, according to CNN.
Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, one of the Democrats' most famous voting rights activists, also skipped the event, citing a scheduling conflict.
Albright of Black Voters Matter told Insider this week he thinks Biden "underestimated the level of the attacks coming from those who have demonstrated they are absolutely willing to absolutely trash democracy and a fear of holding onto power."
'Nothing happens overnight'
Two months later, the strategists, activists, and party members Insider spoke to said they were still disappointed by the lack of progress, though they continued to stand behind Biden.
Albright told Insider that the vice president's office occasionally held calls with voting rights activists, which he saw as a positive step in keeping the fight for federal voting rights legislation alive.
"Our biggest opponents are the people who are actively suppressing our votes," Albright said, referring to Republican secretary of state candidates who falsely believed the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
William Anderson, a community activist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, acknowledged that "no president that has been in office has done enough to move our voting rights forward."
The Biden administration had so far come up short, Anderson said, but he added that "the president is giving it an effort."
"There's so many conflict issues that are going on in the country and we understand that, as a young African-American male, that nothing happens overnight," Anderson said.
China Dickerson, a Democratic political strategist who has advised congressional candidates like Rep. Lauren Underwood of Illinois, told Insider that the party needed to focus more on the state-level battles where voting policy is actually set.
"We don't seem to be getting anywhere in Congress with voting rights," Dickerson said. "We need to get Democrats as strategic as Republicans" about electing candidates "up and down the ballot" at the state level, such as state legislatures and secretaries of state, she said.
If they had passed, the Freedom to Vote Act and The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would have restored portions of the Voting Rights Act that were invalidated by the US Supreme Court in 2013 and implemented several changes such as same-day voter registration and enhanced vote by mail policies, which Democrats say would make it easier for people to vote. But to get them to Biden's desk, Democrats needed to overcome a solid wall of Republican opposition by altering the Senate
An attempt in January to change the filibuster rules failed because Manchin and Sinema voted against it, depriving the party of the 50-vote bloc it needed to change the rules.
After a last-minute meeting on Capitol Hill to convince Senate Democrats to alter the filibuster, Biden candidly told reporters, "The honest-to-God answer is I don't know whether we can get this done." He's not tried to do it using his executive powers.
"My frustration is with the Senate," Texas state Rep. Senfronia Thompson, a Houston Democrat, told Insider. "Congress needs to recognize that voting is a right, not a privilege."