A Biden administration will work tirelessly to protect the voting rights of Americans
Next year the American people must decide as a nation who we are and, perhaps even more importantly, who we want to be. I believe that we are so much better than who President Donald Trump thinks we are.
I still believe in the exceptional idea written into our founding documents: that all men and women are created equal. We’ve never lived up to it, but we’ve never abandoned it — and every generation has worked to make it real for more people.
The seismic events that shaped my youth — the assassinations of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the 16th Street Church bombing and the Orangeburg massacre, the burning and subsequent occupation of my city, Wilmington, Del., by the National Guard — seared into me that the struggle against hate, injustice and institutional racism must be the unrelenting work of all our lives.
It’s why I left a job at a big law firm to become a public defender and later ran for public office. And for a half-century in public office I have proudly fought for voting rights, civil rights, equal justice and equal opportunity.
When I was elected to the Senate, one of the earliest things I worked on was extending and strengthening the Voting Rights Act. I co-sponsored the Equal Rights Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1990 to protect against employment discrimination. I wrote into law a provision that authorizes the Attorney General to pursue cases involving “a pattern or practice of conduct by law enforcement officers” in violation of constitutional or federal rights. That same law enabled our administration to investigate abuses in police departments like Ferguson, Mo.
Today we must renew our commitment to fighting violence and white supremacy, which has found renewed energy under the Trump administration’s policies of hate and division. But we must also redouble our efforts to root out the insidious systemic racism and discrimination built into our laws, our institutions and our hearts — starting with protecting the sacred right to vote.
In 2006 — when we extended the Voting Rights Act for 25 years by a vote of 98-0 in the Senate — I thought we had finally turned this corner as a nation. But in 2013, the Supreme Court ripped the heart out of the law and since then half of all states have introduced bills to curtail the right to vote: currently 35 states have some form of “voter ID” requirement. These laws aren’t about fraud. They’re about making it harder for people of color to vote, and it’s just as un-American today as it was during Jim Crow.
Throughout my career I have worked to strengthen protections for voting access, to make sure there was a paper trail for electronic voting and to ensure poll workers are properly trained. And if I am elected president, I will make voter protection a foundation of my administration.
The Department of Justice will once again protect the fundamental right to vote. And I’ll lead the fight to restore the Voting Rights Act and pass laws that make it easier for people to exercise their rights. But this work can only start once we kick Donald Trump out of the Oval Office.
We must resolve that 2020 will be the year that South Carolinians and Americans across the country stand up to continue the fight for equal rights and equal access to opportunity. I know we can do it, because I’ve seen what this nation can accomplish when we stand together and stand for our highest ideals.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden served as vice president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. He also represented Delaware as a U.S. senator for 36 years.