Failure is Not an Option
FRED WERTHEIMER’S WEEKLY NOTE | July 8, 2021
“The moment of truth is here for our democracy and for the fundamental right of every eligible citizen to vote.”
The Constitution makes clear that Congress has the power to establish voting rules for federal elections and that the rules supersede state laws. Thus, Congress can provide for federal elections the rules for early voting, vote-by-mail, voter registration, and other voting procedures.
H.R. 1/S. 1, the For the People Act, does this.
The Supreme Court’s July 1 decision in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee makes clear that Congress must pass H.R. 1/S. 1 if we are going to override the despicable state voter suppression laws being enacted around the nation. The courts won’t solve this problem.
Congress must also pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to counter the Brnovich decision’s dangerous narrowing of the VRA’s protections against voter discrimination.
We have already achieved two major goals in this Congress for H.R. 1/S. 1. The House passed H.R. 1 in March. Fifty Senators, including Joe Manchin (D-WV), a previous holdout, now agree that protections for voting rights and other democracy reforms should be enacted.
The remaining goal is to obtain an exception to the filibuster rules in order to pass S. 1 by a majority vote. This is the battle now taking place. The legislation must be enacted before Congress goes on recess in August in order to be fully implemented for the 2022 congressional elections.
Senators Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) have been the main holdouts on supporting an exception to the filibuster rules for voting rights legislation, an exception that is essential because we know that Senate Republicans will filibuster the bill.
Exceptions to the filibuster rules that allow legislation to bypass the filibuster rules and be enacted by majority vote have been routine over the decades, with 161 such exceptions enacted between 1969 and 2014. And Senator Manchin, who himself has cosponsored and voted for changes in the filibuster rules, has said that “inaction is not an option” on voting rights legislation.
As Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne wrote recently, “If [Senators] Manchin and Sinema allow Republicans in the Senate to kill all efforts to enforce voting rights and to check the power of big money in politics, they will be throwing in the towel on democracy itself.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has said, “failure is not an option.” That commitment is now on the line.
The moment of truth is here for our democracy and for the fundamental right of every eligible citizen to vote.
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