VOTING RIGHTS
The right to vote and to have your vote counted is the threshold of American democracy and liberty. Without it, nothing is possible; with it, anything is. Decades after a generation of civil rights leaders faced fire hoses and batons, were brutally beaten and even died to secure this fundamental right, it remains under assault.
Since their first days in office, President Biden and Vice President Harris have taken action to protect the sacred right to vote in free, fair, and secure elections, especially for communities of color who have been historically disenfranchised.
Within the first 100 days of his presidency, President Biden signed an executive order directing an all-of-government effort to promote access to voting. Agencies have taken historic action to help veterans, college students, Native Americans, and other underserved communities register to vote.
Because laws are only as effective as their enforcement, the Department of Justice has more than doubled its staff dedicated to enforcing voting rights laws. And because the American people deserve to have faith in their elections, President Biden signed the Electoral Count Reform Act to preserve the will of the people and to protect against the type of attempts to overturn our elections that led to the January 6 insurrection.
Trump has a dark and different view, with a long history of supporting rollbacks to voting rights. He has spent years undermining the electoral process and confidence in elections, and continues to spread blatant lies about the election he lost. Trump’s allies in state legislatures across the country have enacted and continue to introduce laws that make it harder to vote and undermine the will of the people. Trump supported Georgia’s voter suppression law, which makes it illegal to hand out water to voters waiting in line. If he returns to the White House, he will seek to eliminate early voting and mail ballots to make it harder for Americans to exercise their right to vote.
Key to the right to vote is ensuring that voters pick their elected officials– not the other way around. President Biden has spoken out against extreme gerrymandering and harmful court decisions that perpetuate it, and he has consistently advocated for legislation that would end it and create fair congressional maps. Meanwhile, Trump opposes efforts to draw fairer maps.
Congress must restore the protections of the Voting Rights Act and take additional steps to ensure access to the ballot box. Democrats will pass and President Biden will sign the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act to fully secure the right to vote in every state, ensure fair congressional maps for every American, modernize and secure our elections, and curtail the corrupting influence of money in politics.
STOPPING THE INFLUENCE OF SPECIAL INTERESTS
Too much money flows in the shadows to influence our elections. Advocacy group scan run ads on issues attacking or supporting a candidate right until Election Day without disclosing who’s paying for that ad. Too often, powerful special interests use front groups to run these ads to win at any cost. Even foreign entities that aren’t allowed to contribute to political campaigns use dark money loopholes to try to influence our elections.
To fight back, President Biden has called for immediate passage of the DISCLOSE Act, which will require advocacy groups that run ads to influence elections to disclose donors who contribute more than $10,000, and ban foreign entities from contributing to them. Under President Biden’s leadership, the FEC has also finalized a rule expanding political advertising disclaimer requirements for online public communications.
Democrats will also fight to strengthen public financing with small-dollar matching for all federal candidates and crack down on foreign nationals who try to influence elections. We will keep super PACs wholly independent of campaigns and parties and pass a constitutional amendment that will ban all private financing from federal elections. Democrats will end “dark money” by requiring full disclosure of contributors and ban 501(c)(4) organizations from spending on elections. And, to curb the influence of special interests in our elections, Democrats will prohibit corporate PACs and lobbyists from donating to anyone they lobby.
Trust in democracy is critical to protecting democracy. Democrats will adopt ethics reforms to ensure every American can feel confident that their government is working for them, not for special interests. Democrats will enact legislation to apply similar standards to Members of Congress. Democrats will create a federal ethics commission to strengthen good governance laws, like those requiring financial and lobbying disclosure. Democrats will require all federal candidates to disclose at least 10 years of tax returns. To ensure tax dollars go to work for the American people, not for special interests, Democrats will reestablish merit-based federal contracting and ban political appointees from interfering in grantmaking. And to ensure that policy decisions are guided by what’s best for the American people, not by special interests, Democrats will strengthen laws that regulate lobbying by foreign governments and lower the threshold for registering as a federal lobbyist.
SPECIAL NOTE: The full platform for each party can be found on their respective websites. The following excerpts are unedited. Reader discretion is encouraged as these are political statements and have not been checked for accuracy. The Presidential Prayer Team is non-partisan and does not support or endorse any of the following statements.
