Senate Republicans Kick Democracy in the Balls While It’s Doubled Over Coughing Up Blood

After Republicans lost the White House and Senate in 2020, a reasonable thing for them to have done would have been to get together and determine what it is about them that turns off voters, and figure out how to change before the next midterm and presidential elections. In practice this actually wouldn‘t have been a hugely difficult thing to accomplish, given that, just off the top of our heads, we can come up with a whole bunch of stuff people dislike about the GOP, from the racism to the rejection of science, to the embrace of a guy who tried to overthrow the federal government, to Ted Cruz. Instead of looking inward, though, Republicans chose a different tack: disenfranchising millions of voters, and knocking democracy unconscious before burying it in a shallow grave.

That effort has been accomplished on both the state and national level. When it comes to the former, at least 19 states across the country have passed laws this year restricting voting rights, according to a recent tally by the Brennan Center for Justice. In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott signed S.B. 1 into law last month, which, among other things, bans overnight early voting and drive-through voting, both of which were popular options among voters of color in 2020. In Iowa, it is now a criminal offense for election officials to obstruct a partisan poll watcher‘s “activities,” according to the Brennan Center for Justice. In Florida, lawmakers have placed new restrictions on ballot drop boxes and added new I.D. requirements for mail-in voting. In Arkansas, S.B. 644 lets the State Board of Election Commissioners decertify local election officials or take over local elections based on any violations, including inadvertent ones, that they deem “severe” enough, the Brennan Center said. In Georgia, a recently enacted law allows a single person to challenge the eligibility of individual voters. Georgia has also made it a crime to give food or water to people waiting to vote in line, no doubt taking advantage of the fact that lines for communities of color are notoriously long in that state.

In response to these laws, elected officials not in favor of fascism have urged Congress to strengthen voting rights. And we’ll give you two guesses as to which party has repeatedly refused to do so, but you’ll only need one!

Per The New York Times:

Republicans on Wednesday blocked action for the third time this year on legislation to bolster voting rights, leaving Democrats few options to advance the bill outside of changing the Senate filibuster rule and passing it over GOP opposition. All 50 Democrats and independents supported bringing the Freedom to Vote Act to the floor, but all 50 Republicans voted against doing so, maintaining a stalemate over a proposal that Democrats say is needed to counter efforts in Republican-controlled states to impose new restrictions on voting in the aftermath of the 2020 elections.… The tie left Democrats at least 10 votes short of the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster, and there was little evidence that any Republicans could be brought on board.

Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, assailed the proposal put forward by Democrats on Wednesday, which was a compromise version of a broader voting rights measure that Republicans had blocked twice before. “The same rotten core is all still there,” Mr. McConnell said of the new legislation. “As long as Senate Democrats remain fixated on their radical agenda, this body will continue to do the job the framers assigned it and stop terrible ideas in their tracks.”

What is in the bill that McConnell finds so objectionable? He didn’t specify, but it could be anything from setting federal standards for early and mail-in voting to making Election Day a national holiday, both of which would make it easier for people who actually have to work for a living to cast their ballot.

As the Times notes, the bill would require voters to provide some form of I.D. to vote, a measure Democrats had previously been loathe to include but felt compelled to in order to win the support of Senator Joe Manchin, the West Virginian who calls himself a Democrat but might as well be a member of the GOP. Manchin had demanded the I.D. provision, and in exchange suggested he would be able to convince 10 Republicans to support the bill, an effort at which he failed spectacularly. And yet, because he holds all the power, Democrats must still grovel at his feet.

In light of the vote, key Democrats said they would regroup and try again to persuade Mr. Manchin and other Senate Democrats reluctant to undermine the filibuster that an overhaul of the chamber’s signature procedural tactic was the only way to protect ballot access around the country. “We will circle back with all of our colleagues to plead with them to make the changes necessary to pass this bill,” said Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland.

At present, it appears highly unlikely that Manchin will support changes to the filibuster rule, which is apparently more important to him than the preservation of democracy. 

Assailing Republicans for refusing to do a thing to stop the disenfranchisement of millions of Americans, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said after the vote, “I want to be clear about what just happened on the floor of the senate. Every single Republican senator blocked this chamber from having a debate—simply a debate—on protecting Americans’ right to vote in free and fair elections.”

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