 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. On January 11, US President Joe Biden spoke on voting rights, an issue that many have been asking him to take up in the country. The past few years have seen a spate of laws introduced by Republican-controlled state administrations to restrict the ability of people to vote. Biden's speech criticized these measures and called for legislation to ensure that the right to vote is protected. Many have, however, said that this may be too little and too late. What are these laws that seek to restrict voting? Why have they been passed? Eugene Purir of breakthrough news explains. Voter suppression is happening all over the United States. Dozens of states, over 30 states, have introduced varying types of bills designed to restrict the right of individuals to vote and they run the gamut from changes to make it more difficult to register to vote, changes that make it more difficult in order to vote in terms of what identification you have to show to make it more likely you'll be turned away, changes that make it much easier, I should say, to invalidate mail-in ballots based on technicalities, things like you needed two envelopes, and in the second envelope, you needed to write a certain set of words that you didn't write, all sorts of little things that could easily trip people up and make it easier to invalidate ballots. Also restrictions on when people can vote, which is quite significant, both early voting, the days of voting, the times of voting, and also in many states, what can happen regarding people who are waiting in line in a number of states, because of a lot of things, lines can be two, three hours to vote, and so in some states, they've made it illegal to bring water or food to any individual in the line. So they really run the gamut in terms of the actual policies themselves, but they all come from one basic reality which speaks to the politics of what's happening, which is to make it more difficult for people overall to vote, and specifically taking aim at various provisions that are heavily used by working-class individuals, especially from oppressed communities. For instance, in Houston, Texas, they use very effectively a 24-hour drive-up voting procedure because of COVID-19, and it's difficult for people because they're working. Different pieces like that, that has now been explicitly banned by the Texas legislature, there doesn't seem to be any reason why there was no fraud connected to it, but the one thing that's clear is it was primarily used by working-class Houstonians. And so ultimately what we're seeing here is the Republican Party, which is pushing all of these various bills, and really is the sole backer, there's a handful of Democrats here and there, but it's primarily Republicans at the state and the federal level, recognize that their policies are by and large minority policies. They are a minority party, and they deeply fear that changes both in the demographics of the electorate because the Republicans are so racist, they're afraid that the country becoming less white will hurt them, but then also from a policy perspective, because the country has become much more progressive, that as time goes on over the next several election cycles, Republicans in all areas up and down the ballot are more likely to lose elections because of those two factors. So rather than change their policies, rather than try to appeal to the people, rather than become less racist, what we are seeing is they're doing their absolute utmost to prevent as many people in the targeted populations, those they feel will vote against them, demographically or ideologically, to make it difficult for them to vote. And so that's really the politics behind voter suppression, and it is a widespread effort. It's really been going for quite some time, really for the past 10 or 15 years, it's become a major theme amongst Republicans, but in the past two or three years, there has been a hyper acceleration in the number of bills that have been introduced in the number of states and all of them on totally spurious grounds, really just to make it possible for the minoritarian hyper capitalist policies of the Republicans to be able to have more time in power by restricting the voters to the maximum degree possible to people who are friendly to those policies. The current round of voting restrictions are part of a long tradition of attempts to curtail the franchise in the United States. While apologists for the country like to claim that the US is the oldest democracy in the world, much of this democratic history has been riddled with bids to keep key sections of the population out of the ballot box. Many of these are rooted in racism. What has been the history of the United States when it comes to universal franchise and what have been the struggles of the people to ensure they get the right to vote? You know, it really is a commentary on how anti-democratic the United States is, that here we are, that the historic changes that were brought by the civil rights movement, many of them are at risk. I mean, it's important to recognize that the United States has only really had universal suffrage since 1965, since the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which of course was the product of the civil rights movement. Prior to that, black people were essentially completely and totally barred from participation in huge parts of the country, not the entire country, but huge parts of the country. And really, when you look at the history of the United States, it's a history of how few people were allowed to vote at the establishment and how really sort of toot the nail through a lot of struggle, through a lot of bloodshed. You know, the franchise was expanded bit by bit, piece by piece, place by place. But the foundation of the United States, and in fact, the rhetoric of the Founding Fathers was specifically centered on the idea that they did not want the majority of people to vote. And it's very notable. I mean, they were openly writing about this at the time, that the Founding Fathers specifically wanted to have property qualifications and felt that only those who owned property really should be able to vote. Obviously, they wanted to have gender qualifications. And of course, women were not able to vote until the 20th century in the United States, one of the countries that was waiting the latest for women to have the right to vote. Also, of course, there were racial restrictions at the time of the Constitution. There was the three-fifths compromise. So slaves weren't even counted as whole humans in the context of the census, which determines the districts for the House of Representatives. But on top of that, of course, many, many Black people, not just in the South, but all over the country, were not allowed to vote. That continued well into the Civil War. And then, of course, the Civil War brought the right to vote for Black men. And Reconstruction came in in the South, and there was a brief flowering of some form of universal suffrage. Although, of course, I have to remember here that women were not able to vote at the time, but of the most suffrage that had ever existed in the history of the country. And then that was crushed when Reconstruction was rolled back as part of a drive by the richest, most elite sections of the United States of America to get a tighter stranglehold on politics and to consolidate the monopoly capital behemoths and the rule that they needed to push forward their gilded age that was coming out of the Civil War. Then, of course, you have the long period of Jim Crow, which is established in the 1890s, which again takes us back to 1965. Then again, you have a many people have called it the Second Reconstruction period where there's a flowering of some level of civil liberties, of universal suffrage, of greater democratic rights, even going into social and economic issues that there were more social services being granted than ever before. And that was seen as part of the democratic struggle. But then we saw, it's really starting in the 1980s, but in a big way, in the last, let's say, decade and a half, the rollback of those gains from the Civil Rights Movement in a similar sort of era, where you have this minoritarian political agenda coming from a significant section of elites, and universal suffrage and elite interests are deeply at odds. So that's really what's at the heart of the contradiction of American, quote unquote, democracy, is that what we've seen from the very beginning in 1787 to now in 2022 is that universal suffrage and the right to vote really only becomes an issue of salience when huge masses of people are fighting for it. But in periods outside of that, we've seen over and over again, elite agendas that are minoritarian from a population point of view, minoritarian from a public opinion point of view are deeply at odds with universal suffrage and political parties tied to those agendas do everything possible to limit the rights of people to vote. So there is a democracy of a source in the United States, but it's really a dollar democracy and everything is centered around making sure that the right to vote, that popular democracy, that grassroots democracy, that universal suffrage does not infringe to any major degree on the rights of capital. The Democrats solution to the spate of voting restriction laws has been two bills that are before Congress right now, the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. However, the chances of either of them being passed are slim due to Republican opposition and the refusal by a few Democrats in the Senate to support these proposals. Eugene explains these pieces of legislation and their chances of getting passed. Both these bills are relatively wide ranging as it concerns all of their provisions, but the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which is basically a watered down version of the For the People Act, pretty much have two sort of general philosophies behind them. The For the People Act, which is considered to be more comprehensive, just in a more direct way, brings a number of election procedures and processes, which are almost all governed at the state and local level in the United States now, brings more of them under federal jurisdiction or at least under federal mandates around what can and cannot be done in terms of election laws and would essentially ban the vast majority of voter suppression activities that are taking place in the United States in an affirmative sense. The John Lewis Voting Rights Act doesn't necessarily ban anything per se, but it does increase the level of federal oversight, something that's called federal pre-clearance, which was a part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, where certain jurisdictions, either because of past malfeasance and or the demographic mix of where they are now, to make certain election changes, most of them being the ones around the types of voter suppression efforts that we already see, that to make those types of changes, they would have to appeal to the Justice Department to make sure that it was considered consistent with the 14th and the 15th amendments of the Constitution, which are essentially what govern the right to vote and what govern universal suffrage in the United States. So it's a less affirmative support of you cannot do this and elections must be run this way, and it's less of if you want to do this, you have to ask the federal government first. And historically, the reason pre-clearance was relatively effective in the period from 1965 to 2005 was the fact that the prejudices that were behind many of these things were struck down by the Justice Department, but it certainly leaves a lot of scope there in the John Lewis Voting Rights Act for a Justice Department to do nothing. But nevertheless, it would at least create the groundwork to do more to challenge these forms of laws. But what we can see with both laws, whether it's the For the People Act or the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, they have almost no chance to pass Congress. They certainly cannot pass Congress without the repeal of the filibuster rule, which requires 60 votes. The Democrats, of course, only have the 50 votes plus the tie breaking of the Vice President Kamala Harris. So this is the political crux of the whole thing now, is whether or not Democrats will be willing to amend the filibuster in order to push voting rights. President Joe Biden is saying that he's open to that, but it seems in many ways, because you need a certain amount of votes to actually end the filibuster, that they might not be able to get a majority of Democrats to even agree to this because of the Joe Mansions and others who are out there who are obstructionist. But it does seem like there's now more momentum behind the issue of amending the filibuster for one of these acts to pass, but it's very unclear what's going to be possible. And I think there are many, including some who boycotted President Biden's speech in Georgia who don't feel, and I'm talking about voting rights activists here, who don't feel that the Democrats are willing to put the political capital on the table to make this filibuster change happen. So I would say most people are thinking there is very little chance that either these bills will pass or the filibuster will be amended, but the sort of heat and light around it is continuing to grow. It's a major flashpoint issue for the black population, and this is an election year. And so looking to try to pander to different voting groups is certainly something politicians are always looking to do. So I think it's very up in the air, but I would say the odds on chances are not good for these bills to pass. And I believe it's very likely we will go into the fall voting season here in the United States with a number of new restrictions on tens of millions of voters around the country. And finally, in the face of political gridlock, grassroots movements and progressive political organizations have been adopting a number of strategies to counter the impact of these laws. Many have focused on taking steps to ensure greater turnout. What are the various approaches taken by organizations in light of the attack on voting rights? You know, voting rights activists on the ground are doing a number of things to try to to counter these attempts. And the first thing I think most people are doing is trying to double down on voter education, recognizing in many of these places that may be difficult legislatively to stop any of this from happening, explaining to people what are the restrictions? What IDs do you need? When can you vote? Where can you vote? So essentially having to build out a even larger infrastructure in order to not just turn out voters, but to make sure people know and have the information they need to actually vote is a big part of that because I think many people are just assuming that there is a very good chance at the state level and in Congress, not that much is going to happen. And in many of these jurisdictions, the conservative forces control things. Secondarily, we have seen, you know, some entities and institutions wage lawsuits around particular elements of certain voting rights laws and certain voting rights practices, whether we're talking about the purging of voter rolls, which is very frequent in the United States, whether we're talking about voter ID and so on and so forth. So there are attempts on the legal front. And then of course, there are continued attempts at protesting at lobbying at mass civil disobedience. There's been a number of mass civil disobedience in Washington DC, the nation's capital out in Congress over the past three months, hundreds of people have been arrested, I think actually 100 and some 120 maybe on one day actually late in the year there in 2021. So we've seen a ramp up of those sorts of actions and activities as well to try to put pressure on legislative authorities to pull back from many of these, many of the most terrible of these bills.