Sens. Joe Manchin and Lisa Murkowski teamed up Monday to call on top lawmakers to take up a bipartisan reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, a move aimed at steering Democrats away from a partisan and sweeping election overhaul bill that is stalled in the Senate.
Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, and Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, wrote to the top leaders in both parties in Congress urging them to push the Voting Rights Act reauthorization through the House and Senate and pass it with the support of both parties.
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“Congress must come together — just as we have done time and again — to reaffirm our longstanding bipartisan commitment to free, accessible, and secure elections for all,” Manchin and Murkowski wrote.
The letter is another signal that Senate Democrats do not have enough support to pass a much more sweeping election reform bill that Republicans characterize as a political measure aimed at ensuring Democratic victories in future elections.
Manchin has already indicated he will not back the House-passed For the People Act, which allows same-day voter registration, curtails voter ID requirements, and changes campaign laws to curb the influence of outside spending on elections.
No Republicans support the bill.
Democrats cannot pass it in the Senate unless they gut the filibuster, a procedural move Manchin also opposes.
Manchin has instead pushed for bipartisanship in place of eliminating the filibuster.
In the letter authored with Murkowski, a key centrist Republican, Manchin said the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has long enjoyed bipartisan support and should be passed by the Senate instead of taking up the For the People Act.
“Protecting Americans’ access to democracy has not been a partisan issue for the past 56 years, and we must not allow it to become one now,” Murkowski and Manchin wrote.
Manchin’s opposition to the For the People Act has drawn criticism from some Democrats who believe the measure is vital for ensuring more people vote.
Manchin and Murkowski said the Voting Rights Act needs urgent reauthorization in the wake of a 2013 Supreme Court ruling that determined it was unconstitutional to force states to get federal clearance to change election laws.
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“This decision effectively gutted one of the federal government’s most effective tools to preserve confidence in our nation’s elections, and we are seeing the results manifest themselves in state legislatures across the country,” Manchin and Murkowski wrote.
Manchin backs a requirement that all 50 states seek federal approval before changing election laws, but that’s unlikely to win much GOP support.
