Alveda King, niece of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, said this weekend President Joe Biden is stoking racial tensions by opposing voter ID laws.
On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Biden warned of “a true attack on our democracy, from the Jan. 6 insurrection to the onslaught of Republican anti-voting laws in a number of states,” referring to state laws requiring voter ID or barring mass mailing of absentee ballots.
“It’s no longer just about who gets to vote. It’s about who gets to count the vote. And whether your vote counts at all. It’s about two insidious things: voter suppression and election subversion,” Biden said.
Biden also evoked the memory of Rev. King in his push for the removal of restrictions on voting.
“It’s not just enough to praise him, we must commit to his unfinished work to deliver jobs and justice, to protect the sacred right to vote, the right from which all other rights flow,” Biden said of King.
King’s niece said Saturday, however, that Biden’s anti-voter ID rhetoric is fueling rather than quelling racial tensions.
U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as Alveda King (C), a niece of Martin Luther King Jr., speaks before Trump signs the First Step Act and the Juvenile Justice Reform Act at the White House in Washington, DC, on December 21, 2018. (JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)
Voter ID is necessary “because we tell somebody they don’t need an ID, they don’t count,” Alveda King told the John Solomon Reports podcast. “They may as well just mark an ‘X’ on a ballot. So we need the ID and sensible voting.”
What “Biden is doing [is] stirring the race card, race baiting, playing the race card, trying to stir up emotion,” King added.
During a January 11 speech on voting rights in Georgia, Biden also referenced Martin Luther King, asking his hearers whether they are on his side.
“Do you want to be the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?” he asked.
When campaigning for the presidency in June 2020, Joe Biden claimed that Martin Luther King Jr.’s death did not make as much of an impact as the death of George Floyd.
“Even Dr. King’s assassination did not have the worldwide impact that George Floyd’s death did,” Biden said during an event on June 11, 2020.
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