In a speech Friday, Garland outlined a number of steps the Justice Department will take to protect every citizen’s right to vote, and within the next 30 days said the department will double the number of employees in the Civil Rights Division’s “enforcement staff for protecting the right to vote.”
“There are many things that are open to debate in America. But the right of all eligible citizens to vote is not one of them. The right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy, the right from which all other rights ultimately flow,” Garland said to a room of prosecutors inside the Justice Department’s Great Hall.
The Justice Department, he said, will examine new restrictive voting laws across the country and take action against any “violations.”
Garland said that since 2013 when the Supreme Court decided that portions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were no longer valid, “there has been a…
