Senate Republicans have successfully blocked sweeping legislation authored by Democrats this year that would have dramatically changed campaign and voting laws nationwide in a manner the GOP believes would give the Democratic Party a significant advantage in future elections.
With just months to go before the midterm campaign season begins in earnest, Democrats plan to try again to pass at least some of the reforms that they believe will make voting more accessible and block red-state election law changes they fear would make it harder to vote.
Both the House and Senate are working on voting and election reform legislation over the summer recess.
When the House returns on Aug. 23 to consider the Senate’s $3.5 trillion budget resolution, it will “likely” vote on the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced this week.
The bill is named after the late Georgia congressman and civil rights activist and would reinstate and augment provisions in the 1965 Voting Rights Act the Supreme Court struck down in 2013.
The House passed a much broader election and voting bill earlier this year that would mandate automatic voter registration and allow same-day voter registration. It would ban voter ID laws along with many other sweeping changes.
Democrats say the For the People Act will expand voting access while cleaning up elections by ending so-called dark money in politics through new disclosure laws. It would also ban partisan gerrymandering of voting districts.
No Republican voted for the bill, and GOP lawmakers blocked it in the Senate, where 60 votes are needed to pass most legislation.
Sen. Joe Manchin, a key Democratic centrist from West Virginia, also voted “no,” angering his party, which wants him to help end the filibuster so it can pass the bill along with many other measures on the liberal wish list.
Republicans said the massive measure was written to ensure Democratic victories in future elections. One provision in the bill would tilt the nonpartisan Federal Election Commission to the party in power, which now consists of Democrats.
They decried efforts by Democrats and President Joe Biden to portray new voter integrity laws passed in several states as an attempt to revive “Jim Crow” style restrictions on minority voters.
The midterm elections offer Republicans a real chance of regaining control of the House, where Democrats hold a very slim majority, and the Senate, which is currently split 50-50.
They fear the Democrat-authored changes aim to keep that party in power by eliminating voter integrity provisions and politicizing campaign laws.
“The phony outrage is wearing thin on the American people,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said. “Citizens know it isn’t attacking democracy to have things like commonsense voter ID and commonsense voter-list maintenance alongside lots of early voting, lots of mail-in voting, and lots of Election Day voting.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, attempted to bring up the bill a second time in a middle-of-the-night session. Still, Republicans again blocked it while Manchin also rose to object to the bill.
“I firmly believe that we need commonsense voter ID requirements, just like we have in West Virginia, that strengthen the security of our elections without making it harder for Americans to vote,” Manchin said. “I also firmly believe that we shouldn’t politicize the Federal Election Commission, prohibit any guardrails on vote by mail, or prevent local election officials from doing basic maintenance of voter rolls.”
Schumer said Manchin and a group of centrist and liberal Democrats are at work on a compromise bill that can win the backing of all 50 Democrats.
“We are making very good progress, and we are going to keep at it,” Schumer said. “We are going to come up with that legislation. We are going to rally around it.”
Schumer said a voting rights bill “will be the very first matter of legislative business” when the Senate reconvenes in September.
No Republicans are involved in the talks, which means it will again be impossible to pass the legislation in the Senate, no matter what bill the House sends over or the compromise reached by Manchin and other Senate Democrats.
Liberal groups are pressuring Senate Democrats to get rid of the filibuster to turn the House-passed For the People Act into law.
More than 50 labor, environmental, civil rights, and civic groups wrote to Schumer to demand he get rid of the filibuster or create a carve-out for certain legislation to pass over the objections of Republicans.
But that would require 51 votes, and Manchin is opposed to the move, as are other centrist Democrats in the Senate. Moreover, Schumer has never ruled out changing decades of precedent and eliminating the filibuster at some point.
“We are going to keep at it,” Schumer insisted. “And as I said before, everything is on the table.”
