Delivering a eulogy to John Lewis on Thursday, former President Barack Obama condemned “attacks on democracy” and the right to vote, without appointing President Donald Trump or Republicans who should limit pandemic voting.
“Even though we’re sitting here, there are those in place and they do everything they can to deter other Americans from voting,” Obama said at a ceremobig apple in Atlanta, Georgia. “through the last polling stations, attacking minorities and academics with restrictive identity laws and attacking our voting rights with surgical precision, including undermining the postal service in the run-up to an election that will feature mail-order ballots. Sick. “
Highlighting Lewis’ time-paintings as a civil rights activist and legislator, Obama called for automatic voter registration, adding for the ex-inmates, whom he said “won their chance for now.” He said polling stations and early voting preference will be expanded, that voting day preference will become a public holiday, and that citizens of Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico deserve equivalent representation in government.
“I know it’s a feast of John’s life. Some people say we shouldn’t live off those things, but that’s why I’m talking about them,” Obama said. “John Lewis has spent his time on this earth to fight the same attacks opposed to democracy, and the most productive thing in America, that we are seeing circulating right now.”
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Obama called on lawmakers to reinalise the voting rights law and expressed that he ended the systematic filibuster, which he called a “Jim Crow relic.” He said lawmakers deserve to pass even more than John Lewis’ Voting Rights Advancement Act, a law renamed in Lewis’ honor after his death that seeks to change the provisions of the 196 act that were weakened in a 2013 Supreme Court decision.
“If politicians want to honor John, and I’m very grateful for the legacy and paintings of all the congressional leaders who are here, there’s an easier way than calling him a hero. Do you like to honor John? Let’s honor him through the revitalization of the law by which he was willing to die,” Obama said.
Obama’s comments in Lewis’s speech come when some Republican leaders have voiced their opposition to the vote by mail as the rustic prepares for a nationwide election amid the coronavirus pandemic. Trump began the morning with a tweet suggesting that November’s presidential election be postponed and reiterated his statement that the expansion of mailing balmass would lead to voter fraud.
“With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA,” Trump said. “Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”
Democrats denounced the idea, arguing that there has been little evidence of fraud and that states had used mail voting for years, and Mavens said Trump did not have the legal authority to delay the election on his own.
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Obama was one of three former contenders to speak at Lewis’ funeral, along with George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. The pre-inspection Jimmy Carter, 95, sent a reading to the service instead of attending. Trump didn’t come. The pre-inspectors praised Lewis for his direct dedication to making “wise problems” and his commitment to nonviolent protest.
“We can’t think of voting as a race to do, if we’ve been given some time. We will have to regard it as the ultimate critical action that we can reject in the call of democracy. Like John, we prefer to give everything,” Obama said.
Lewis died on July 17 after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at point IV. 80th.
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In a painting written for the New York Times before his death and published Thursday morning, Lewis lobbied the importance of either exercising his right to vote.
“Other normal humans with additional vision can redeem America’s soul by becoming what I call wise problems, obligatory problems,” Lewis said. “Voting and participating in the democratic procedure is essential. Voting is the most challenging agent of nonviolent replenishment you have in a democratic society. You have to exploit it as it’s never very guaranteed. You can lose it.”