Biden Moves to Expand Voter Access After Hotly Contested Election

From the first week in November to the first week in January, America was in a bit of a pickle.  We had, for the first time in our history, a President who didn’t accept the results of the national election, and who was very serious about taking this challenge all the way to the Supreme Court.

The basis for the challenge was a multi-pronged attack, led by Trump’s legal team of Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, and with unofficial supports from folks like Sidney Powell, all of whom argued that some percentage of the votes counted were erroneous.  Some believed that it had to do with “ballot dumps” in the middle of the night, while others were certain that Dominion Voting Systems were fudging the vote in the direction of the Democrats.

Donald Trump himself often spoke of “illegal ballots”, cast either via an unsolicited, mailed ballot, or coming from individuals who should not be voting in the first place.

And while Trump was looking to clamp down on voting access, to ensure that those who voted had a right to do so, Joe Biden looks to be moving in the other direction early in his first term.

President Joe Biden signed an executive order Sunday expanding voting access in what the White House calls “an initial step” in its efforts to “protect the right to vote and ensure all eligible citizens can freely participate in the electoral process.”

The move comes as Republicans in statehouses around the country work to advance voter suppression legislation, including a bill in Georgia that voting rights groups say targets Black voters. Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, have pushed measures in recent days to increase voting rights, including HR1 — a sweeping ethics and election package that contains provisions expanding early and mail-in voting, restoring voting rights to former felons, and easing voter registration for eligible Americans.

Sunday’s order directs the heads of all federal agencies to submit proposals for their respective agencies to promote voter registration and participation within 200 days, while assisting states in voter registration under the National Voter Registration Act. In addition, the order instructs the General Services Administration to modernize the federal government’s Vote.gov portal.

The move will undoubtedly irk Republicans who ascribe to Trump’s theories about the 2020 election, as it could lead to an even wider net being cast in 2024.