A decade later,McConnell remains consistent in his opposition to a Democratic agenda.
The latest push to reform voting rights centred on two key pieces of legislation that Democrats argued would safeguard future elections after Trump and give disenfranchised communities greater opportunities to have their say.
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The first was the John Lewis Voting Rights Act,named after the late Congressman and civil rights leader,which would restore and update federal protections of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The second was the Freedom to Vote Act,which,among other things,would expand opportunities to vote through early or mail-in ballots,allow voters to sue over attempts to set aside valid election outcomes,and make election day a public holiday.
The matter was seen as urgent because in recent months,Republicans have pushed a new wave of voting laws in multiple states that Democrats view as blatant voter suppression,from ballot drop boxes being removed in counties with high numbers of black and brown communities,to restrictions on early or postal voting.
The problem for Biden is that the current Senate is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans who have 50 votes each (with Vice-President Kamala Harris the tie-breaker). Biden was hoping the Senate would support a once-off change to the chamber’sso-called filibuster rule,which requires parties to get at least 60 votes to pass bills and end debate.
Republicans,however,viewed it as an attempted “federal takeover of elections”,while Sinema and Manchin – the same two Democrats who stymied Biden’s Build Back Better bill – cited the risk of future parties using the rule change to ram policies through the Senate without a fair vote.
So what comes next for voting rights in America?
In a statement,Biden said he was “profoundly disappointed that the United States Senate has failed to stand up for our democracy” but that he would not be deterred.
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However,the President knows he has limited time to get some runs on the board,particularly in the face of growing discontent among the grassroots activists and communities whose support the Democrats will rely on in critical midterm battlegrounds.
One option would be to throw his weight behind a less ambitious proposal that is being discussed by both sides of politics:to rewrite the Electoral Count Act.
In a nutshell,the act was established in 1887 but contains some modern-day risks and ambiguities. For instance,it allows members of Congress to object to counting votes from a state – if one person from the House and one from the Senate writes an objection – but it does not specify what kind of objections are appropriate. Instead,Congress can debate and decide the matter.
In 2005,for instance,some members objected to counting the electoral college votes cast in Ohio for George W. Bush,alleging the results were inaccurate;in 2021 some members objected to them being counted for Biden in Pennsylvania and Arizona.
The concern is that when the objection mechanism is used,it not only results in Congress spending considerable time debating the matter,it can also further erode confidence in democracy.
A bipartisan Congressional committee is now seeking to counter this,and recently drafted a report with a range of proposals,including dramatically raising the threshold for objections to a state’s presidential election results.
What’s more,key senators,including McConnell,Manchin and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney,have expressed an interest in reforming the act,which gives it a much better chance of surviving than this week’s attempt to blow up the filibuster.
It’s not entirely what Team Biden wanted but at least it’s something. And for a struggling first-term president trying to navigate a hostile Senate,something is better than nothing.
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