President Joe Biden urged Americans to vote in favor of democracy, reject election-denying candidates and be patient with results ahead of the primary national Election Day held for the reason that Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“It’s estimated that there are greater than 300 election deniers on the ballot all across America this 12 months,” Biden said, speaking at Washington, D.C.’s Union Station. “We won’t ignore the impact that is having on our country. It’s damaging, it’s corrosive and it’s destructive.”
Biden’s omen got here with lower than per week to go until Election Day and five days after an assailant with a history of sharing right-wing conspiracy theories broke into the house of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and attacked her husband with a hammer, causing serious damage to his head.
In his speech Wednesday evening, Biden said Pelosi’s attacker David DePape used the identical rhetoric the rioters did on Jan. 6. Biden, without naming Donald Trump, said the previous president had the rioters “whipped up right into a frenzy” by his big lie that the election of 2020 had been stolen. The lie, Biden said, has led to further political violence and voter intimidation seen over the past two years.
“This intimidation, this violence against Democrats, Republicans and nonpartisan officials just doing their jobs are the consequence of lies told for power and profit. Lies of conspiracy and malice. Lies repeated time and again to generate a cycle of anger, hate, vitriol and even violence,” Biden said. “On this moment, we’ve to confront those lies with the reality.”
Biden cited recent polls that show Americans are concerned with the state of democracy and reminded voters they’ll confront it on the ballot box. The alternatives made now, Biden said, will determine whether democracy in the US will endure.
“We want to begin searching for one another again, seeing ourselves as we the people, not as entrenched enemies,” Biden said. “This can be a selection we are able to make. Disunion and chaos usually are not inevitable. There’s been anger before in America, there’s been division before in America, but we have never given up on the American experiment and we won’t do this now.”
Biden also reminded Americans that in lots of states absentee ballots can’t be counted before polls close on Election Day, which suggests it is going to take time for the ultimate results to are available. This became a central point of contention for conspiracy theorists in the course of the 2020 election, particularly as many Democrats voted by mail amid the coronavirus pandemic. Far-right election deniers claimed the legally solid ballots were fraudulent.
“It takes time to count all legitimate ballots in a legal and orderly manner,” Biden said. “It is often been necessary for residents in a democracy to be told and engaged. Now it is important for residents to be patient as well.”
