President Biden Marks Bloody Sunday with Executive Order Promoting Voting Access alabamanews.net - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from alabamanews.net Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
| Updated: March 8, 2021, 10:05 p.m.
Her current residence may technically be the back of a Ford F-150, but Utah’s rugged canyon country is where she has made her career and home.
After spending nine years as a commercial raft guide and several seasons as a National Park Service ranger, her resume highlights those skills: a familiarity with remote wilderness travel, technical search and rescue experience, and the ability to row a raft through whitewater rapids, to name a few.
But this year, when the ranger was applying for seasonal jobs with the Interior Department along with thousands of hopeful candidates across the United States, her application was ranked by a new metric: her ability to complete complex logic and reading comprehension problems on a timed, online multiple-choice test.
On this day in 1965, state troopers beat and tear-gassed hundreds of peaceful protestors crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. The protestors were seeking justice and to ensure their right to vote would not be denied. At the head of the march were former Congressman John Lewis and Rev. Hosea Williams. As the troopers advanced with clubs raised, the group knelt in prayer. The images of protestors, bloody and bruised, flashing on television screens across the nation spurred Congress to pass, and President Johnson to sign into law, the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Congressman Lewis’ fight to protect and expand the vote did not end that day in Selma. He carried the mission to our nation’s Capital and remained a vigilant protector of our right to vote, knowing all too well the burdens borne to guarantee it.
Biden Signs Election Executive Order to Increase Voting by Criminals
President Joe Biden signed an executive order on March 7 altering the way the federal government handles elections, including by increasing voting and voter registration access for criminals in prison and on probation.
“The order will direct the Attorney General to establish procedures to provide educational materials related to voter registration and voting, and to the extent practicable, to facilitate voter registration, for all eligible individuals in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons,” a fact sheet distributed by the White House states.
The order also directs the attorney general to help former prisoners obtain appropriate identification to satisfy state voting requirements. Biden is also asking the U.S. Marshals Service to include language in its contracts to facilitate voting by mail and provide eligible criminals information on voting and voter registration.
Biden signs voting rights order for anniversary of Selma’s 1965 ‘Bloody Sunday’ march
Updated Mar 07, 2021;
Posted Mar 07, 2021
US Vice President Joe Biden helps lead the annual crossing of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, commemorating Bloody Sunday, the violent 1965 clash between law enforcement and protestors on the historic bridge during a march for voting rights, Sunday, March 03, 2013, in Selma, Ala. Vasha Hunt/vhunt@al.com ORG XMIT: ALBIN101AP
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Biden also signed an executive order aimed at expanding voting rights access.
“Today, on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, I am signing an executive order to make it easier for eligible voters to register to vote and to improve access to voting,” Biden said in his remarks prepared for the breakfast.