With voter rights issues still being debated over a year after the controversial 2020 election, President Joe Biden (D) is now echoing Nikki Fried on comparing Republican election legislation to Jim Crow laws.
Almost one year ago, the 2021 Florida legislative session concluded and gained national infamy for a number of laws passed that Republicans have nationally been gunning for. In particular, SB 90, which sought to reform voter integrity after many people voiced concerns over the legitimacy of the 2020 elections.
While these Americans were largely branded as conspiracy theorists, some Democrats went a step further. Commissioner of Agriculture Nikki Fried (D-FL) was one of the first in Florida to call the legislation, "The new Jim Crow," sparking a comparison between racist post-slavery laws of the South to contemporary Republican policies.
While most in the GOP brushed this off as a fringe progressive's remarks, the rhetoric has gained momentum on the national stage in 2022.
President Biden fired off a Tweet today, calling, "voter suppression and election subversion," blatantly, "Jim Crow 2.0."
Jim Crow 2.0 is about two insidious things: voter suppression and election subversion. It’s about making it harder to vote, who gets to count the vote, and whether your vote counts at all.
We have to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
— President Biden (@POTUS) January 18, 2022
At the end of his Tweet, the president then encouraged the new Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. However, the legislation is failing to gain traction with the conventional Senate rules and even Democrat party members, such as US Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and US Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV).
Many Democratic legislators have recently proposed that the 60 vote threshold, Senate filibuster, be shelved. The filibuster was the mechanism that has stopped many pieces of Build Back Better legislation for Democrats on the federal level.
Fortunately for Fried, the gubernatorial hopeful who is slightly behind US Rep. Charlie Crist (D-FL) in the Democrat primary, doing away with the filibuster seems to be resonating with more and more Democrat voters on this particular issue.
