With the wide-ranging “Build Back Better” bill appearing all but dead, Democrats have turned their attention back to previously stalled voting reforms, and they’re willing to scrap 215-year-old Senate rules to do so.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is going all-out to pass partisan legislation overhauling federal elections, saying it’s critical to protect democracy.
He’s got the full backing of the White House.
“If the only thing standing between getting voting rights legislation passed and not getting passed is the filibuster, I support making the exception of voting rights for the filibuster,” President Joe Biden recently told ABC News.
Vice President
Kamala Harris
added in remarks on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots that “here in this very building, a decision will be made about whether we uphold the right to vote and ensure free and fair elections. … Let’s be clear: We must pass the voting rights bills that are now before the Senate.”
Democrats have introduced two bills, dubbed the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the For the People Act, which they claim are needed to expand voting rights, rein in gerrymandering, and create new ethics roles for federal officeholders.
With all 50 Senate Republicans opposed to the bills, viewing them as a federal takeover of elections that would undermine security, Democrats will need to alter the filibuster to get them to the president’s desk.
Dating back to 1806, the filibuster now requires 60 votes to end debate on most bills, preventing legislation from being passed by a simple majority. Thus, Democrats call for changing or eliminating it to pass laws with just 51 votes. Schumer plans to have a debate on changing the rules on or before Jan. 17.
How would it work?
There are a number of options, though none of them truly amount to a one-time exception. The simplest way would be to change the text of Senate Rule 22, the cloture rule requiring 60 votes to end debate. But doing so would require the support of two-thirds of senators, which isn’t going to happen in a 50-50 chamber.
A more likely scenario would involve creating a new Senate precedent. In this case, commonly known as the “nuclear option,” a senator would raise a point of order suggesting a new interpretation of the rules that elections legislation requires only a majority vote. The controversial nuclear option itself requires only a majority vote, establishing a new precedent.
Republicans stand united against the idea, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell accusing Schumer of trying to “break the Senate.”
“There’s no such thing as a narrow exception,” he said. “This, in my view, is genuine radicalism.”
Schumer himself was against the idea before he was for it. When Republicans looked at filibuster changes during former President George W. Bush’s second term, he gave a fiery rebuttal.
“The ideologues in the Senate want to turn what the Founding Fathers called the cooling sauce of democracy into the rubber stamp of dictatorship. We will not let them,” he said. “They want to make this country into a banana republic, where if you don’t get your way, you change the rules. Are we going to let them? It’ll be a doomsday for democracy if we do.”
Nonetheless, there’s a recent precedent for both parties going nuclear. In 2013, then-Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid
led Democrats in eliminating the 60-vote threshold to confirm presidential nominations, except for the Supreme Court. Four years later, Republicans also eliminated the threshold for Supreme Court confirmations.
McConnell famously foreshadowed the Republican move after Democrats went for the nuclear option in 2013: “You’ll regret this, and you may regret this a lot sooner than you think.”
At least two Democratic senators seem to agree with him today. Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, frequent thorns in the side of party leadership, have said they oppose procedural changes. Manchin said any carveout will lead to Democrats eating the whole turkey.
Thus, the party in power may lack the votes for the voting bills and filibuster changes. If it does succeed, it could live to regret it within just a few years. But the fight is still worth it, according to Democratic strategist Brad Bannon.
“If you look at American political history, the constant theme is to allow more and more people to vote,” he said. “What Republicans are doing now in states to restrict the right of suffrage is an affront to the progress we’ve made in the last 260 years. … Schumer should push for a vote because it allows him to say, ‘This group of senators stood up for American democracy, and the others tried to shoot it down.'”
But if the effort fails, it’ll mark yet another defeat for the Biden administration, which faces sagging approval ratings due to a resurgent COVID-19, a struggling economy, and rising crime rates.
Is there a compromise? Maybe. Some conservatives have proposed changes to the Electoral Count Act, the vaguely written 1887 law that contributed to 2020’s chaos. McConnell has said changes to clarify and strengthen the law are worth discussing, as have members of the House’s Jan. 6 committee.
But to make that change, they’ll need to convince the very man leading the charge for altering the filibuster.
“That makes no sense,” Schumer told reporters when asked about the Electoral Count Act. “If you’re going to rig the game and then say, ‘Oh, we’ll count the rigged game accurately,’ what good is that?”
