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Supporters of Voting Rights Bill Rally in Downtown Wheeling

Photo by Joselyn King West Virginia Sen. Owens Brown, D-Ohio, speaks during a rally urging support of the “Freedom to Vote” Act Friday morning. The rally took place across Chapline Street from the City-County Building in downtown Wheeling.

WHEELING — Local voting rights advocates agree with U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin that “inaction on election security is not an option.”

With less than a year to go before the 2022 general election, supporters of Manchin’s “Freedom to Vote” Act rallied on Chapline Street across from the City-County Building in downtown Wheeling and urged its adoption.

The voting rights advocates last came together in July to urge Manchin to support the earlier “For The People Act” election reform bill he opposed.

Since then, Manchin and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., have put forth the “Freedom to Vote” Act now being considered in Congress.

“We knew Joe Manchin was working on a bill. We knew he was putting out ideas about it,” said former West Virginia Secretary of State Natalie Tennant.

“This is it. This is his bill, the ‘Freedom to Vote’ Act. It is his legacy. It is his signature bill and he has worked on it. Now it’s up to him to get in over the finish line.”

Tennant said the timing is urgent to pass the bill as the 2022 election year approaches.

“This should have been acted on and passed months ago so election administrators would know what to anticipate,” she said.

The “Freedom To Vote Act” addresses voter registration and voting access, election integrity and security, redistricting, and campaign finance.

Specifically, the bill expands voter registration policies pertaining to automatic and same-day registration and voting access, as well as vote-by-mail and early voting procedures. It also limits removing voters from voter rolls.

Election Day would be a federal holiday under the bill.

Additionally, the bill sets forth provisions related to election security, and requires states to conduct post-election audits for federal elections. The bill outlines criteria for congressional redistricting and generally prohibits mid-decade redistricting.

Tennant said provisions of the bill should be easy for West Virginia elections clerks to administer.

“We have early voting, and you know who brought us early voting — Joe Manchin (when he was West Virginia Secretary of State.),” Tennant said. “That is why these national standards are so important to him.”

Wheeling City Council member Rosemary Ketchum said a major tenet of democracy is an “effective, efficient and accessible voting box.”

“Most people believe their democracy works fairly for them. But unfortunately, that is becoming less and less true as the years move on,” she said. “At all levels of government, this is a conversation we should be having.”

Among those attending the rally were members of the NAACP, the Communications Workers of America and the Ohio County Democratic Women.

West Virginia Sen. Owens Brown, D-Ohio, also president of the West Virginia NAACP, said American democracy is teetering “on the edge of a cliff.”

“It was the Black vote in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Detroit, Michigan; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Atlanta, Georgia that saved us from going over the cliff in the 2020 elections,” he said. “If it wasn’t for the black vote in those cities, we would be talking about President (Donald) Trump today.

“We as a nation must face the ugly truth about race and voting in America. We must rip off the scab of this country’s sore of racism that always seems to be lying beneath the surface in America.”

Republican state legislatures enacted 30 laws this year “making it harder for Americans to vote,” according to Brown.

“These voter suppression laws were put in place to make it difficult for Black people and Brown people in cities to exercise their right to vote…,” he said. “These voter suppression laws are the greatest threat to democracy since the American Civil War.”

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