AOC says communities 'can't out-organize' voter suppression and warns the 'ground is being set to overturn results'

AOC is joining progressives criticizing the notion that voter suppression can be out-organized.

The Times reported that White House officials believe organizing can overcome restrictive voting rules.

"The time to fight like hell for democracy is right now. We may not get another chance," Ocasio-Cortez wrote.

10 Things in Politics: Get the latest political & economic news. Loading Something is loading. Email address By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez vocally pushed back against the notion that grassroots organizing alone can combat voter suppression, joining a growing chorus of progressive voices criticizing President Joe Biden's White House for not pushing forcefully enough for voting rights protections.

"Communities cannot 'out-organize' voter suppression when those they organize to elect won't protect the vote.& Even if they DO out-organize, the ground is being set to overturn results. The time to fight like hell for democracy is right now. We may not get another chance," Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter on Monday.

Ocasio-Cortez was responding to a New York Times report published Friday which detailed the tension between the Biden White House and civil rights activists who are sounding the alarm on GOP efforts in states to restrict voting and undermine the results of the 2020 election.

The Times reported that in "private calls" with activistsWhite House officials and close allies of the president have expressed confidence that it is possible to 'out-organize voter suppression.'"

The Atlantic's Ron Brownstein reported in late May that while White House officials consider new voting laws "offensive from a civil-rights perspective, they do not think most of those laws will advantage Republicans in the 2022 and 2024 elections as much as many liberal activists fear."

Many activists are frustrated that Biden, who has called new GOP election laws "Jim Crow on steroids" and described them as the biggest challenge American democracy has faced since the Civil War, isn't calling for reforms of the Senate filibuster to pass voting rights legislation.

The current Senate filibuster rules require 60 votes to debate and pass most legislation. In late June, Senate Republicans filibustered the For The People Act, or S. 1, Democrats' sweeping voting rights legislation.

Congressional Democrats are turning next to the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court struck down in 2013 in the Shelby v. Holder case.

Read more: Meet Matt Graves, the Biden administration's pick to oversee hundreds of US Capitol attack cases

Biden continued to reject the idea of nixing the filibuster in a Wednesday CNN town hall, saying that getting rid of it would "throw the entire Congress into chaos and nothing will get done."

Ocasio-Cortez also referenced the emerging threat of GOP-backed election subversion in the states, noting that no amount of organizing can stop partisan interference in the counting of votes

A June update to a report from Protect Democracy, States United Democracy Center, and Law Forward identified 24 laws passed and enacted in 14 GOP-controlled states that criminalize aspects of the election administration process and give partisan officials more control over how elections are conducted and certified, in addition to GOP lawmakers pursuing dubious "audits" and recounts of already-certified elections in states like Arizona.

In Congress, the House Administration Committee, which has jurisdiction over voting and election law, is holding a hearing on the issue of election subversion on Wednesday.