President Joe Biden issued an executive order Sunday aimed at expanding voting rights, according to a senior administration official, on the 56th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” when police and state troopers beat peaceful protesters crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, who were demonstrating for voting rights.

What You Need To Know

  • On Sunday, the 56th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday," President Joe Biden issued an executive order Sunday aimed at expanding voting rights

  • The order will direct all federal agencies to create strategies to promote voter engagement and registration and instruct them to help states under the National Voter Registration Act, among other actions aimed at expanding access to voting

  • On March 7, 1965, police and state troopers beat peaceful protesters crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, who were demonstrating for voting rights

  • Biden also called for Congress to pass H.R. 1, the sweeping voting reform bill that the House passed last week, and strengthen the Voting Rights Act at the Martin & Coretta Scott King Unity Breakfast Sunday

"Democracy doesn’t happen by accident," the White House said in a release. "We have to defend, strengthen, and renew it. Free and fair elections that reflect the will of the American people must be protected and defended."

The order will direct all federal agencies to create strategies to promote voter engagement and registration and instruct them to help states under the National Voter Registration Act, as well as improve and modernize vote.gov, the United States’ official voter information website, increase voting access for members of the military and Americans abroad, and review barriers to voting for people with disabilities.

The move comes as Republicans in statehouses nationwide are aiming to limit voting rights in the wake of the 2020 election, many of them citing Biden’s predecessor’s false claims of voter fraud. 

Former President Donald Trump falsely claimed, without evidence, that the 2020 election was rigged and railed against voting by mail, despite federal officials saying there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud and courts nationwide, including the Supreme Court, throwing out over 60 cases claiming voter fraud brought by the former president or his allies.

"In 2020, our very democracy on the line, even in the midst of a pandemic, more Americans voted than ever before. Multiple recounts in states and decisions in more than 60 courts – from judges appointed by my predecessor, including at the Supreme Court – upheld the integrity of this historic election," President Biden said Sunday at the Martin and Coretta King Unity Breakfast. "Yet instead of celebrating this powerful demonstration of voting – we have seen an unprecedented insurrection in our Capitol and a brutal attack on our democracy on January 6th. A never before seen effort to ignore, undermine, and undo the will of the people."

"Our nation just witnessed an unprecedented insurrection in the Capitol. And we are in the midst of newly aggressive attacks on voting rights taking place right now in state legislatures all across the country,” a senior administration official told reporters, adding: “It is our duty to ensure that registering to vote and the act of voting be made simple and easy for all those eligible to do so."

In response to such actions, the House of Representatives last week passed a sweeping voting reform bill — H.R. 1, the For the People Act — which, among other things, would mandate automatic voter registration and same-day voter registration, allow for widespread voting by mail, and make Election Day a federal holiday, among a number of other changes.

Biden spoke virtually Sunday at the Martin and Coretta King Unity Breakfast, calling on Congress to pass H.R.1 and restore the voting rights act, which is named after the late civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis.

The bill is unlikely to pass in its current form due to the Senate’s current filibuster rules, which has led to a number of progressive lawmakers and activists calling for an end to the filibuster.

"Every eligible voter should be able to vote and have it counted," Biden said. "If you have the best ideas, you have nothing to hide. Let the people vote."

Lewis, one of the organizers of the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, passed away in 2020 after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

"The legacy of the march in Selma is that while nothing can stop a free people from exercising their most sacred power as a citizen, there are those who will do everything they can to take that power away," Biden will say later Sunday. 

Biden concluded by recalling a conversation he had with Rep. Lewis shortly before his passing.

"A few days before he passed, Jill and I spoke with John, Congressman Lewis," Biden said. "But instead of answering our concerns about him, 'How are you doing, John,' he asked us to stay focused on the work left undone to heal and to unite this nation around what it means to be an American."

"That’s the God’s truth," Biden said of Rep. Lewis. "John wouldn’t talk about his pending death or his concerns. He said we just got to get this done."