US Democrats’ year-long effort to change the country’s voting rules surfaced in the Senate on Wednesday night, but there are signs their quest will fail.
As debate began in the politically divided 100-member chamber, there was no indication that any Republicans would support the plan, which called for national monitoring of elections to override new voting rules enacted by 19 Republican-controlled state legislatures. will allow.
There was also no indication that the two leading centrist Democrats – Kirsten Cinemas and Joe Manchin – would drop their opposition to changing the Senate’s legislative rules to enforce election law legislation without Republican support.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke initially on the need to implement voting measures, one of the key pieces of President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda.
Instead of giving state-by-state measures in place, the law would establish uniform voting rules across the country. It would, among other provisions, declare early November election days for Congressional seats and the presidency as a national holiday, require two-week early voting hours, and require voting law changes made by those states. The new federal review would mandate those who have a history of discrimination against minorities. Citizen.
Schumer made reference to the election of 1868, the first time when newly freed African American slaves could vote, and suggested that the question before the Senate was whether it would take back Black voting rights previously obtained more than 150 years earlier. Had happened.
McConnell scoffed at Democrats’ complaints about newly enacted state laws tightening voting rules. Democrats argue that the rules would curtail the voting rights of black voters, who have heavily supported Democratic candidates in past elections.
McConnell called concerns over the state’s laws a “fake panic” of Washington Democrats … they argued that voting would not be affected by the new measures.
In addition to unified Republican opposition into the election law, Cinema and Manchin remained opposed to changing the Senate’s long-standing filibuster rule, which gives a minority party – Republican or Democrat – the right to demand that the move to relocate. Let there be an exaggeration of 60 votes. for a vote on the controversial law.
To the disdain of many of their fellow Democrats in the Senate, two Democrats have said the filibuster should not be narrowly erased so that the voting rights law can be approved by a simple majority vote.
Cinema and Manchin have said that the use of filibuster in the Senate protects minority views in the chamber and promotes bipartisanship in American democracy by forcing them to compromise on legislation.
Democratic leaders were expected to pass the election law on a 51-50 vote, with Vice President Kamala Harris putting the tiebreaker.
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