To no one’s surprise, the United States Senate defeated Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s attempt to force a vote on the newly-configured “Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act” on Wednesday evening, Jan. 19. Then Schumer proceeded immediately to ‘double down’ with a doomed attempt to create an exception to the Senate’s filibuster rule. The latter vote, just as expected, was 52-48 to reject Schumer’s move—with Democratic Senators Manchin (WV) and Sinema (AZ) voicing loud and clear “Yea"s. Manchin made the obvious, and correct, point: “The filibuster plays an important role in protecting our democracy from the transitory passions of the majority and respecting the input of the minority in the Senate.”
Normally, clever legislators don’t allow votes that they know they are going to lose, so one is correct to suspect other forces at play here. There is filibuster-proof legislation—that is, with at least ten Republican Senators on record willing to join with the Democrats—to address the ambiguous language in the Electoral Count Act of 1887 regarding Congress’s role in certifying state electoral votes. Since the open question of Congress’s legal obligations on January 6, 2021, caused such disarray in the country, one would think such legislation needed, appropriate, and a basis for some bipartisan collaboration. That the matter is avoided speaks volumes about what the “voting rights” charade has been about.
Broadening access to the ballot and maintaining the integrity of the votes cast have been two key aspects of civil rights legislation for over fifty years. Democrats and Republicans have given large majorities to legislation crafted with those two considerations in mind. Before the “COVID-emergency” conditions of the 2020 election, there was a 571-page bill, the 2019 “For the People Act,” given the status of House Resolution 1 (HR1). It wasn’t actually designed for passage, nor even to be seriously considered.
