Democratic supporters of US President Joe Biden hold letter signs reading together ‘Senate, Act Now’ during a candlelight vigil at the National Mall on the first anniversary of the attacks. January 6, 2021 into the Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump.
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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer delayed a vote on a pair of voting rights bills late Thursday, pushing back into debate over house rules that will determine the fate of reforms elections that the party considers important to defending American democracy.
New York Democrats say chamber won’t absorb legislation until Tuesday, citing “Covid-related cases and another potentially dangerous winter storm” approaching Washington, Senator Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, announced a positive Covid-19 test result on Thursday. Democrats will lack a simple majority until he can return to the equally divided Senate.
“Make no mistake, the US Senate – for the first time in this Congress – will debate the voting rights legislation starting on Tuesday,” Schumer said Thursday night. “Members of this chamber have been elected to debate and vote, especially on an issue as important to the beating heart of our democracy as this one. And we will proceed. .”
Republicans plan to block two proposals, known as the John Lewis Voting Freedom Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Promotion Act. Once the bills fail, Democrats plan to consider ways to overcome opposition and push the proposals through with a simple majority.
Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, DN.Y., Sens. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., Left, and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., conduct a news conference after a Senate Democrat had lunch at the U.S. Congress on Tuesday, January 4 , in 2022.
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The strategy seems to have ended. While all Senate Democrats have signed off on the election legislation, at least two – Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona – have said they would not support the changes needed to pass them. it. Under current rules, Democrats need at least 10 Republicans to pass most legislation.
“Removing the 60-vote threshold for a party with the thinnest possible majority passing these bills I support will not ensure that we prevent educators from winning office.” , Sinema said on Thursday as she reiterated her stance.
If the two centrist senators hold on to the rule changes, it seems unlikely that Democrats will be able to pass a series of reforms they see as crucial to protecting access to the ballot. Provisions in the bill would expand early voting and mailing, make automatic voter registration the national standard, make Election Day a national holiday and restore parts of the Rights Act voting in 1965 was canceled by the Supreme Court.
It remains unclear how Democrats will proceed if they fail to dismiss the rumour. Some Republicans were open to reforming the Vote Counts Act of 1887 to make it harder for local officials to sabotage election results.
The possibility arose last year when some GOP officials backed former President Donald Trump’s push to overturn presidential election results in a revolving state based on false conspiracy theories that fraud was widespread. caused damage to his President Joe Biden.
Many Democrats have called the counting reforms insufficient without changes to allow more people to have access to the ballot in the first place. But the more difficult overturning could become one of the only options left if their fancy bills fail.
Democrats have tried and failed to pass election bills multiple times in the last year because Trump’s election lies prompted the January 6 attack on Capitol Hill and contributed to passed restrictive voting laws in states such as Texas and Georgia. A year after a pro-Trump mob entered the Capitol while Congress assessed Biden’s victory, the president in a pair of speeches this month described a democracy at stake and pressured the Senate to change its rules to protect elections.
Biden met with Manchin and Sinema for more than an hour on Thursday night. They had “a frank and respectful exchange of views on voting rights,” a White House official said.
The president met Democrats in the Senate earlier in the day and sounded pessimistic about his party’s chances of passing voting rights bills.
“I hope we can get this done,” Biden said. “The honest answer to God is, I don’t know if we can do this.”
The realities of the Senate signaled the bills would fail. But Democrats want to show their voters the drive to pass reforms after Trump tried to overturn the election and state legislatures passed legislation that could hurt voters. people of color unequal.
Republicans say the Democrats’ bills will go too far. They say the plans would give the federal government too much control over state elections.
Congress has passed voting protection legislation in the past, most notably the Voting Rights Act, which Democrats aim to restore.
The GOP also omitted exceptions to a fundamental change to the functioning of the Senate, which would make it less likely for lawmakers to find consensus.
“There’s a way forward for my Democratic colleagues to give back to the country they’ve severely disappointed,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Thursday. “It’s not about trying to disrupt the Senate and rewrite election law. It’s about really starting to address the problems that American families need to solve.”
Looking down on the potential failure of voting rights legislation, Biden pledged to continue working to protect access to the ballot.
“Like every other major civil rights bill, if we miss it the first time, we can go back and try a second time,” he said. “We missed it this time.”
