Bypassing The Filibuster Rules Will Save Voting Rights For Millions Of Americans

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FRED WERTHEIMER’S WEEKLY NOTE | October 28, 2021

Fred WertheimerThe stage is now set for enacting historic voting rights, anti-corruption, and anti-gerrymandering legislation. This essential legislation – the Freedom to Vote Act – will overturn the unprecedented wave of voter suppression laws passed this year by Republican-controlled state legislature around the country and provide protections to stop highly partisan state and local election officials from rigging the results of federal elections.

But, we are running out of time to enact the bill and have it effectively implemented in time for the 2022 congressional races.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has done an outstanding job of getting us to this final stage in the Senate where 50 Senators now support this vitally important voting rights legislation.

Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), the last Democratic holdout on the legislation, played a pivotal role in developing the Freedom to Vote Act, known as the Manchin compromise bill. The legislation retains the key voting rights and anti-gerrymandering reforms of earlier legislation, as well as other important anti-corruption reforms.

With highly partisan gerrymandering occurring all over the country and with new federal voting rights standards needing to be put in place in the states for the 2022 congressional elections, time is of the essence.

Senator Schumer has recognized this by setting a goal of passing the legislation in the Senate before Thanksgiving.

However, there are only three and a half working weeks left before Thanksgiving and the Senate is scheduled to be on recess for one of those weeks – the week of November 8.

The Senate recess should be canceled.

Senate Democrats should stay in town and focus on the last act in this battle – finding an approach that works for Senators Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) to support bypassing the filibuster rules and pass the Manchin compromise by a majority vote.

Senators Manchin and Sinema are the two Democrats who, to date, have said they do not want to change the filibuster rules. Bypassing the filibuster rules, however, has been routine over the years. Senator Manchin himself has supported changes to the rules in the past.

Today, Senate Republicans are flagrantly abusing the filibuster rules to paralyze the Senate and make it a dysfunctional institution.

This is not about ending the filibuster; it is about making a change in the rules to allow voting rights legislation to pass by a majority vote.

Allowing a change in the filibuster rules to pass the Freedom to Vote Act will protect millions of eligible Americans from losing their ability to vote, stop highly partisan election officials from hijacking federal election results, and protect against extreme partisan gerrymandering.

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Fred’s Weekly Note appears each Thursday in Wertheimer’s Political Report, a Democracy 21 newsletter. Read this week’s newsletter here. Or, subscribe for free here and receive your copy each week via email.

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