A Major Breakthrough On Voting Rights & Democracy Reform

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There was a major breakthrough Wednesday on voting rights and other democracy reforms when Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), previously an opponent of S. 1, the For the People Act, said he and other Senate Democrats were drafting a revised bill.

According to The Washington Post, Senator Manchin said a new bill could be released in the coming days. Manchin stated, “Everybody’s working in good faith on this. “It’s everybody’s input, not just mine, but I think mine, maybe … got us all talking and rolling in the direction that we had to go back to basics,” he said.

At the same time, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) said today, that she and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senator Manchin, and Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) had met recently and are “very close” to a deal on a revised For the People Act.

While hard work still lies ahead, this represents major progress in the fight to protect the right to vote.

In other developments, 39 organizations that led the successful fight for small donor, public financing for state elections in New York called on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Thursday to stick to his commitment to keep the small donor, public matching funds system for federal elections in in any revised bill.

Also today, more than 1,000 organizations wrote President Biden on Thursday urging him to take actions that match his strong words in Philadelphia on voting rights.

Grassroots pressure also continues to grow on Congress to pass legislation that would override the unprecedented voter suppression and discrimination laws being passed by Republican-controlled state legislatures around the country. These laws are aimed in particular at Black, brown, and other minority voters.

H.R. 1, the House version of S.1, passed the House last March. In the Senate, 49 Senators  sponsored S. 1, with Senate Manchin the only missing Democrat.

With Senator Manchin’s statements yesterday, we appear headed to a revised voting rights and democracy reform bill with the support of 50 Senators and Vice President Harris, the votes needed to pass the bill.

That would still leave the need to overcome a Republican filibuster. This could be achieved by a narrow “carve out” from the filibuster rules for voting right and democracy reform legislation.

Narrow filibuster “carve outs” have been routine, with 161 statutes enacted over the decades that allowed legislation to pass in the Senate by majority vote, without the 60 votes required to end a filibuster.

The last exception to the filibuster rule was engineered by none other than Mr. Filibuster, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who created an exception to the rule that allowed three Trump Supreme Court nominees to be confirmed by majority vote.

If an exception to the filibuster rules is fine with McConnell, when it suits his political interests, than an exception certainly should be available to protect the sacred right to vote for all Americans.