President Joseph Biden came to Philadelphia to give a speech at the National Constitution Center on the value of voting rights Tuesday.
“I’m here in Philadelphia at the National Constitution Center, the city and the place where the story of ‘We the People’ — ‘We the People’ — began,” Biden said, emphasizing the importance of Philadelphia in our young democracy.
To begin his speech, he defined the most important fundamental of America: the right to vote.
“With it, anything is possible. Without it, nothing,” Biden said.
As the speech progressed, the president retold the civic feats of certain citizens in the past election.
“Just think about the past election. A 102-year-old woman in Arkansas who voted for the first time on the very spot she once picked cotton. A 94-year-old woman in Michigan, who voted early and in person in her 72nd consecutive election, you know what she said? She said this election was, quote, ‘the most important vote we ever had.’”
Going further, President Biden presented metrics on the 2020 Presidential Election. According to him, 150 million Americans voted in the last major election with “unyielding courage and faith in our democracy.”
However, he talked about how those numbers do not show the entire description of the United States democratic institution. From anti-vote legislation that impedes access to voting, to the denial of election results that sparked the Capitol attacks on Jan. 6, millions of Americans were forced to succumb to the tainted voting process in the United States.
“In 2020, democracy was put to a test: first by the pandemic, then by a desperate attempt to deny the reality and the results of the election and then by a violent and deadly insurrection on the Capitol, the citadel of our democracy,” said Biden.
Because of the impediments, Biden makes a case that the U.S. and its government must make preparations for the 2022 elections.
“We’ll engage in an all-out effort to educate voters about the changing laws, register them to vote, and then get the vote out. We’ll encourage people to run for office themselves at every level,” Biden stated.
Through a concerted effort, Biden is sure that democracy will be ensured as the Founding Fathers intended it to be. By providing education to voters about changing the laws and allocating resources to voting rights organizations to register citizens and vote, Biden is sure that there will be a greater voter turnout in 2022 than there had been in 2020.
Although we are “facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War,” Biden claims that not all hope is lost.
“It doesn’t have to be this way… We have the means. We just need to show the will — the will to save and strengthen our democracy,” Biden said to the applauding crowd.