It’s Time to Act on Voting Rights
FRED WERTHEIMER’S WEEKLY NOTE | July 15, 2021
“It is time for the Senate to pass legislation to ensure that every eligible American in this country has the right and ability to vote in federal elections.”
President Joe Biden said this week about the attacks on voting rights in the states: “[We] are facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War.” He further said, “We must pass the For the People Act. It’s a national imperative.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has said repeatedly about Congress acting to protect voting rights: “Failure is not an option.”
Senator Joe Manchin has said about Congress acting to protect voting rights: “Inaction is not an option.”
Senator Kyrsten Sinema has cosponsored the For the People Act, which would protect every eligible citizen’s right to vote in federal elections, in this Congress and in the last Congress.
The moment of truth has arrived. It is time for the Senate to choose: Voter suppression and discrimination or an exception to the filibuster rules?
Numerous Republican-controlled state legislatures have enacted voter suppression and discrimination laws this year that will potentially prevent millions of citizens – in particular Black, brown, poor, the disabled, and the elderly – from being able to vote in federal elections.
S. 1, the For the People Act, pending in the Senate after passing the House in March, will override these voter suppression and discrimination laws and protect the right to vote for all Americans in the 2022 congressional elections and the federal elections that follow.
The Senate filibuster rules – currently a stumbling block because of unanimous Republican opposition – have never been sacrosanct. A Senate majority can change the rules and has done so frequently in the past.
From 1969 to 2014, there were 161 exceptions to the filibuster rules enacted in statutes.
An exception to the filibuster rules was used to enact the 2017 Trump tax cuts and the 2021 Biden American Rescue Plan. An exception will also be used to enact the proposed multi-trillion budget reconciliation spending bill this year.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell engineered an exception to the filibuster rules in 2017 that was used to confirm Supreme Court Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett by majority votes.
Given past exceptions, an exception to the filibuster rules certainly can and must be made now, in order to protect the most fundamental right in a functioning democracy – the right to vote.
It is time for President Biden to decide whether to emulate President Lyndon Johnson’s successful battle for voting rights in 1965 or to sit out the current voting rights battle in the Senate.
It is time for Senator Schumer to demonstrate that “failure is not an option” and keep the Senate in session in August for as long as it takes to prove that statement correct.
It is time for Senator Manchin to go beyond his words to show that “inaction is not an option” on voting rights.
It is time for the Senate to pass legislation to ensure that every eligible American in this country has the right and ability to vote in federal elections.
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