Senate Breakthrough: The Freedom To Vote Act Is Introduced
A major breakthrough occurred in the Senate yesterday when a revised version of the For the People Act – sweeping voting rights and anti-corruption legislation – was introduced.
The new bill, the Freedom to Vote Act (S. 2747), represents the work of eight Democratic and Independent Senators, led by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
Importantly this group included Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) who had opposed the original bill and whose concerns are directly addressed in this new revised bill.
As a result, there are now 50 Senators ready to support this historic legislation. Next up is a showdown on the filibuster rules, since Senate Republicans have made clear they will filibuster the bill.
While the revised bill doesn’t have everything reform groups supported, nevertheless it is transformational legislation that will protect our democracy against dangerous threats.
Provisions to establish fair rules for voting in federal elections will supersede the destructive voter suppression laws enacted by 18 states already this year. Other provisions will attack political money corruption in Washington and prevent partisan gerrymandering.
The revised legislation importantly includes a small donor, matching funds system for House races.
Majority Leader Schumer, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), the chief sponsor of the revised bill, and Senator Manchin, a key architect of the revised bill, deserve great credit for getting us to the final stage of this battle.
The other Senators in the group also deserve great credit for achieving this result. They include Senators Jeff Merkley (D-OR), who was the lead sponsor of the original bill, Reverend Raphael Warnock (D-GA), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Angus King (I-ME), Alex Padilla (D-CA), and Jon Tester (D-MT).
Majority Leader Schumer has announced that there will be a vote as early as next week on a motion to proceed to debate the Manchin compromise legislation. Senate Republicans will block debate on the bill as they previously blocked debate on S. 1.
This will set the stage for figuring out how to bypass the filibuster rules and pass the legislation with the votes of 50 Senators and the vote of Vice President Harris to break the tie.
Exceptions to the filibuster rules has been done routinely over the years. There have been 161 statutes enacted in recent years that allowed measures to pass the Senate by majority vote without being subject to the filibuster rules.
Among the most important filibuster exceptions is the budget reconciliation process, which has already been used to pass budget measures twice this year, with the support of Senators Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ). Both Senators are, thus far, holdouts on bypassing the filibuster rules for the voting rights legislation.
The most recent exception to the filibuster rules was engineered by the “Filibuster King,” Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY). In 2017, McConnell created an exception to the rules to allow Supreme Court nominees to be confirmed by majority vote instead of the 60 votes needed to end a filibuster. This McConnell exception resulted in three Trump Supreme Court nominees being confirmed by majority vote.
Thus, the filibuster rules are not now – and never were – written in stone.
Today, an obstructionist filibuster threatens the voting rights of millions of Americans, in particular, Black, brown, and other minority voters.
Democracy is at grave risk.
The choice is clear. Senators Manchin and Sinema need to opt for the right side of history and support bypassing the filibuster rules to protect the sacred right to vote and preserve our democracy.
