MLK And Voting Rights Legislation

This past Sunday, Civil Rights hero Dr. Martin Luther King Jr would have celebrated 93 years of life. He once said: "True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice." We can honor him by carrying forward his work on civil liberties and democracy.

MLK’s family called to halt celebrations of MLK day without the passage of voting rights legislation recently proposed by the Biden Administration. In a speech in Georgia last week, President Biden announced "to protect our democracy, I support changing the Senate rules, whichever way they need to be changed, to prevent a minority of senators from blocking action on voting rights.” Currently a majority of 60-40 senators is required to pass most legislation in the senate which has exacerbated political gridlock in America’s growing politically partisan climate. Biden has also called to enact the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act which was passed in the lower chamber, the House of Representatives, last year but has been blocked by the senate.

The Freedom to Vote Act would create federal standards for voting and expand voting access through laws such as making election day a national holiday, requiring 15 days of early voting, and Restoring voting rights to formerly incarcerated people convicted of felonies. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would require states to get permission from the federal government to make changes to their voting laws. These bills would make voting easier and expand the right to vote to disabled, underprivileged, poor communities who have notoriously been denied the right to vote in this country voting rights and Civil Rights go hand-in-hand which is why MLK’s family is fighting so hard to ensure these changes are met.