Atlanta, Georgia – President Joe Biden, in a speech Tuesday in Atlanta, called for changing Senate rules in order to pass voting rights protections, going farther than he has before in an effort to unify Senate Democrats around what he frames as an existential issue for the country.

Biden, a 36-year veteran of the Senate whose support for the legislative filibuster has slowly softened in recent months, called for changing rules to allow federal voting rights legislation to pass via a simple majority instead of a 60-vote filibuster threshold.

The move comes after Republican lawmakers in 19 states enacted 34 restrictive voting laws in 2021 that make it harder for Americans to vote.

Two pieces of federal voting rights legislation that aim to defang the GOP-led laws, the John Lewis Voting Rights (Advancement) Act and Freedom to Vote Act, have both stalled in the evenly divided Senate and hang in the balance.

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"I believe the threat to our democracy is so grave that we must find a way to pass these voting rights bills," Biden said in his speech delivered at the Atlanta University Center Consortium, which comprises four historically Black colleges and universities. He was accompanied by Vice President Kamala Harris.

"Debate them, vote, let the majority prevail," the president said of the stalled bills. "And if that bare minimum is blocked, we have no option but to change the Senate rules, including getting rid of the filibuster for this."

The speech is the sort of energetic, full-throated push for action on the issue of voting rights that many activists have been waiting for since Biden was inaugurated.

Yet, several prominent voting rights activists, dismayed that the president until now prioritized a bipartisan infrastructure law and a now-stalled effort to enhance the social safety net over voting rights, opted not to attend the speech and made clear they won't be satisfied with more words, only action by the Senate.

"We don't need another speech. What we need is actually a plan," said Cliff Albright, executive director of the Black Voters Matter Fund, who said it's long past time Biden puts the weight of the presidency behind a push to change the filibuster rule.

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Martin Luther King III, the son of the iconic civil rights leader, also met with Biden and Harris on Tuesday, saying in a statement that he understood the frustration of those activists choosing not to attend but remained hopeful a concerted push by the White House on voting rights could lead to action.

"We've seen what's possible when President Biden uses the full weight of his office to deliver for bridges, and now we need to see him do the same for voting rights," King said.

Before delivering remarks, Biden and Harris, who rarely travel together outside of Washington (they took separate planes), laid a wreath at the crypt of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King.

They also stopped at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where both Martin Luther King Jr. and the late Democratic Rep. John Lewis, the civil rights hero and Georgia congressman, were eulogized.