The House on Thursday voted to pass Democrats’ voting rights legislation ahead of an expected vote in the Senate.
But Senate Democrats lack the votes to meet the Senate’s 60-vote threshold for a combination of voting rights bills pushed by the White House.
President Joe Biden will meet with Democrats on Thursday to advocate for passing the measures even if it meant bypassing or eliminating the long-standing Senate filibuster in order to do so.
The House on Wednesday combined the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act and attached them to the NASA Enhanced Use Leasing Extension Act of 2021. Since the original bill was passed by the Senate, the maneuver will allow the House to send the legislation to the Senate as a “message,” enabling Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to bring the bill to the floor for debate, avoiding a Republican filibuster on the motion to proceed.
WITH DIMINISHED CLOUT, BIDEN HOPES TO SAVE DOOMED VOTING BILL IN SENATE
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in remarks on the House floor that the country “faces the most dangerous assault on the vote since Jim Crow.”
Pelosi argued the legislation would end voter suppression, allowing local election officials to nullify results based on their own interests, partisan gerrymandering, and target money from special interest groups.
When asked at a press conference about the bill’s prospects in the Senate, Pelosi said, “You’ll have to ask them what their next steps are,” and she suggested the bill would raise public awareness on the matter.
During the debate, Rep. Claudia Tenney, a Republican from New York, argued, “It’s Groundhog Day again on the House floor.”
“Yet again, our Democratic colleagues continue to gaslight the American people by claiming that despite record turnout in recent elections, Republicans are scheming to steal the sacred right to vote from our fellow citizens,” Tenney said.
Tenney sarcastically said the solution to the “very real problem” offered by Democrats is “a partisan federal takeover of elections that empowers unelected bureaucrats in Washington to oversee local elections and overturn popular voting protection laws.”
She argued the legislation was “deceitfully added to a NASA leasing authorities bill in the dead of the night.”
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The legislation faces steep odds in the Senate, where despite appeals from the president, Democrats do not appear universally on board for plans to scrap the filibuster.
