AP: “President Joe Biden plans to sign an executive order directing federal agencies to take a series of steps to promote voting access, a move that comes as congressional Democrats press for a sweeping voting and elections bill to counter efforts to restrict voting access. Biden will announce the order during a recorded address on the 56th commemoration of ‘Bloody Sunday,’ the 1965 incident in which some 600 civil rights activists were viciously beaten by state troopers as they tried to march for voting rights in Selma, Alabama.”
“‘Every eligible voter should be able to vote and have it counted,’ Biden says in a script of his recorded remarks to Sunday’s Martin and Coretta King Unity Breakfast. Biden’s order includes several modest provisions. It directs federal agencies to expand access to voter registration and election information, calls on the heads of federal agencies to come up with plans to give federal employees time off to vote or volunteer as nonpartisan poll workers, and proscribes an overhaul of the government’s Vote.gov website, according to an administration official who briefed reporters. Democrats are attempting to solidify support for HR 1, which touches on virtually every aspect of the electoral process. It was approved Wednesday on a near party-line vote, 220-210.”