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      Here’s how Republicans ‘dismembered’ a Democratic stronghold

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      Here’s how Republicans ‘dismembered’ a Democratic strongholdScroll through our visual guide to see why proposed Tennessee maps amount to a masterclass in gerrymanderingRepublican lawmakers in Tennessee gave final approval on Monday to an aggressive plan to split Nashville, a Democratic bastion, in a deeply Republican state, into several congressional districts as part of an effort to tilt the state’s congressional map in their favor. The plan is now waiting for approval from Governor Bill Lee, who is likely to sign it. Nashville currently sits in the state’s fifth congressional district, represented by Jim Cooper, a Democrat who has held the seat for nearly 20 years. It’s a solid Democratic district – Joe Biden carried it by nearly 24 points in 2020 – but on Tuesday, Cooper announced he was retiring from Congress.“Despite my strength at the polls, I could not stop the general assembly from dismembering Nashville. No one tried harder to keep our city whole,” he said in a statement. “I explored every possible way, including lawsuits, to stop the gerrymandering and to win one of the three new congressional districts that now divide Nashville. There’s no way, at least for me in this election cycle, but there may be a path for other worthy candidates.”The new districts crack the concentration of Democratic voters in Nashville and cram them into three districts that stretch across the state and are filled with reliable Republican voters. Donald Trump would have easily carried all three of the proposed districts in 2020. 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      in US Politics

      The fight for federal voting rights legislation is far from over | Jared Evans

      by

      The fight for federal voting rights legislation is far from overJared EvansThe Freedom to Vote: John R Lewis Act would restore key voting rights provisions and protect American democracy. We can’t give up American democracy is in a state of emergency. Without federal voting rights legislation, discriminatory voting laws will continue to pass unchallenged and harm millions in their wake. Following the US Senate’s recent failure to pass the Freedom to Vote: John R Lewis Act, civil rights leaders urged senators to continue pressing for the bill. But understanding how deeply the absence of its protections will continue to affect voters is key to the bill’s success.Arguably the most crucial measure of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was section 5’s pre-clearance requirement that states with a recent history of voter discrimination get approval from the justice department before implementing voting changes. However, the US supreme court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v Holder struck down the pre-clearance requirement claiming that voting conditions for racial minorities had improved and that its use was outdated. Since then, numerous states passed laws they had previously abandoned due to the threat of pre-clearance. Other states continued to enact laws restricting voting that were already under way before Shelby. These statutes are so restrictive they would have never seen the light of day if pre-clearance was still intact. New voter suppression laws in Texas, Georgia and Florida are the most recent examples of these efforts.The Freedom to Vote: John R Lewis Act (FTV) – which combines two previous bills to defend voting rights and democracy more broadly – would restore the section 5 pre-clearance provisions and create protections against the most common obstacles faced by voters.Those of us on the frontlines in the fight for voting rights know the immediate impact these bills would have on our communities. Last year in Iberia parish, a rural community on the Louisiana Gulf coast that is one-third Black, election officials closed eight polling locations – five of which were in predominantly Black neighborhoods. Voters were not properly notified of this change and, even more troubling, the closures were implemented just weeks before an election. At least 20,000 voters were affected, many of whom did not discover their polling location had changed until they arrived at the location they had been voting at for years. Under FTV, election officials would be required to publicly announce all voting changes at least 180 days before an election, allowing voters adequate time to become familiar with their new polling location, secure child or adult care, and notify their employer, if necessary.In Texas, FTV would immediately reduce the challenges voters of colors face. Nearly all the population growth from 2010 to 2020 in Texas was from communities of color, yet the map that the state legislature enacted reduced the number of districts in which voters of color make up the majority of eligible voters. If FTV were enacted, the redrawing of districts would be the responsibility of a non-partisan redistricting commission that would prevent elected officials from choosing their own constituents. States would also not be able to enact racially discriminatory maps without first submitting them for approval to the DoJ.Mississippi, the state with the largest percentage of Black voters, offers no opportunity for early voting and voters must get documents notarized to vote by mail. When every voter is forced to vote in-person on election day, it often leads to long lines at polling sites and heavy traffic. When voters are forced to get signatures on both the application to vote by mail and the ballot itself, it is especially difficult for elderly voters who often live alone to have their ballot counted.In 2020, this requirement’s burden increased dramatically due to the pandemic, particularly for the elderly, whose increased vulnerability to Covid meant attaining these necessary signatures risked exposure. During the 2020 general election, elderly Mississippians were forced to risk their health to vote in person on election day, unless they met the standards for one of the limited qualifications that allowed someone to vote by mail. FTV would require all states to have at least 15 consecutive days of early in-person voting, including two weekends, giving voters in states like Mississippi another option to cast their ballot.Without pre-clearance, states and localities will continue to suppress votes by enacting restrictive voting changes that target voters of color. While we still have section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting practices that dilute minority voting strength, this measure is reactive, meaning advocates can only challenge a voting change after its implementation. However, section 2 was also weakened by the supreme court in 2021 by creating new and additional atextual burdens to the Voting Rights Act’s primary mechanism for challenging voting laws that have a discriminatory result. Until pre-clearance is restored, discriminatory changes will continue to be enacted – and will affect every election. The Senate must act to protect the fundamental right to vote and pass federal voting rights legislation by any means necessary – before it is too late.
      Jared Evans is a policy counsel at NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
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      Where egos dare: Manchin and Sinema show how Senate spotlight corrupts

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      Where egos dare: Manchin and Sinema show how Senate spotlight corruptsRobert ReichThe two Democratic senators chose to wreck American democracy, simply to feed their sense of their own importance What can possibly explain Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema’s decision to sink voting rights protections? Why did they create a false narrative that the legislation had to be “bipartisan” when everyone, themselves included, knew bipartisanship was impossible?Arizona Democrats censure Kyrsten Sinema for voting rights failureRead moreWhy did they say they couldn’t support changing Senate filibuster rules when only last month they voted for an exception to the filibuster that allowed debt ceiling legislation to pass with only Democratic votes?Why did they co-sponsor voting rights legislation and then vote to kill the very same legislation? Why did Manchin vote for the “talking filibuster” in 2011 yet vote against it now?Part of the answer to all these questions can be found in the giant wads of corporate cash flowing into their campaign coffers. But if you want the whole answer, you need also to look at the single biggest factor affecting almost all national politicians I’ve dealt with: ego. Manchin’s and Sinema’s are now among the biggest.Before February of last year, almost no one outside West Virginia had heard of Manchin and almost no one outside Arizona (and probably few within it) had ever heard of Sinema. Now, they’re notorious. They’re Washington celebrities. Their photos grace every major news outlet in America.This sort of attention is addictive. Once it seeps into the bloodstream, it becomes an all-consuming force. I’ve known politicians who have become permanently and irrevocably intoxicated.I’m not talking simply about power, although that’s certainly part of it. I’m talking about narcissism – the primal force driving so much of modern America but whose essence is concentrated in certain places such as Wall Street, Hollywood and the United States Senate.Once addicted, the pathologically narcissistic politician can become petty in the extreme, taking every slight as a deep personal insult. I’m told Manchin asked Joe Biden’s staff not to blame him for the delay of Build Back Better and was then infuriated when Biden suggested Manchin bore some of the responsibility. I’m also told that if Biden wants to restart negotiations with Manchin on Build Back Better, he’s got to rename it because Manchin is so angry he won’t vote for anything going by that name.The Senate is not the world’s greatest deliberative body but it is the world’s greatest stew of egos battling for attention. Every senator believes he or she has what it takes to be president. Most believe they’re far more competent than whoever occupies the Oval Office.Yet out of 100 senators, only a handful are chosen for interviews on the Sunday talk shows and very few get a realistic shot at the presidency. The result is intense competition for attention.Again and again, I’ve watched worthy legislation sink because particular senators didn’t feel they were getting enough credit, or enough personal attention from a president, or insufficient press attention, or unwanted press attention, or that another senator (sometimes from the same party) was getting too much attention.Several people on the Hill who have watched Sinema at close range since she became a senator tell me she relished all the attention she got when she gave her very theatrical thumbs down to increasing the minimum wage, and since then has thrilled at her national celebrity as a spoiler.Biden prides himself on having been a member of the senatorial “club” for many years before ascending to the presidency and argued during the 2020 campaign that this familiarity would give him an advantage in dealing with his former colleagues. But it may be working against him. Senators don’t want clubby familiarity from a president. They want a president to shine the national spotlight on them.Lindsey Graham, reverse ferret: how John McCain’s spaniel became Trump’s poodleRead moreSome senators get so whacky in the national spotlight that they can’t function without it. Trump had that effect on Republicans. Before Trump, Lindsey Graham was almost a normal human being. Then Trump directed a huge amp of national attention Graham’s way, transmogrifying the senator into a bizarro creature who’d say anything Trump wanted to keep the attention coming.Not all senators are egomaniacs, of course. Most lie on an ego spectrum ranging from mildly inflated to pathological.Manchin and Sinema are near the extreme. Once they got a taste of the national spotlight, they couldn’t let go. They must have figured that the only way they could keep the spotlight focused on themselves was by threatening to do what they finally did last week: shafting American democracy.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
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      Draft Trump order told defense chief to seize swing-state voting machines

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      Draft Trump order told defense chief to seize swing-state voting machinesUnpublished executive order, obtained by Politico, among documents provided to January 6 panel after court ruling

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      In the heady days between Donald Trump’s defeat in November 2020 and the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol, an executive order was prepared. It commanded the defense secretary to seize voting machines in battleground states, as part of Trump’s “big lie” that the vote was rigged.Michael Flynn allies allegedly plotted to lean on Republicans to back vote auditsRead moreThe draft executive order, obtained and published by Politico, was never sent and its author is unknown. It was part of a cache of documents handed over to the House committee investigating the 6 January violence, after the supreme court ruled this week that Trump could not shield himself from oversight on grounds of executive privilege.The disclosure of the draft order adds to evidence of the lengths to which Trump and his close advisers were prepared to go to keep him in the White House, against the will of the American people. Under the draft order, the defense secretary would have been required to carry out an assessment of the voting machines “no later than 60 days from commencement of operations”.That would have pushed the chaos that Trump assiduously attempted to sow around Joe Biden’s legitimate victory well beyond the handover of power at the inauguration on 20 January.The publication of the document will provoke intense speculation as to who wrote it. Politico pointed out that at the time the draft order was dated, 16 December 2020, the idea of seizing voting machines in key states was being vigorously promoted by Sidney Powell, a controversial lawyer who had Trump’s ear at the time.The document outlines the seizure of voting machines by the Pentagon under federal emergency powers. That would in itself have been incendiary, as it would have amounted to a dramatic display of federal over state power of the sort normally fiercely resisted by Republicans.The author of the draft order seeks to justify such a contentious move by regurgitating conspiracy theories. For example, pointing to voting machines, the document says there is “evidence of international and foreign interference in the November 3, 2020, election”.It names Dominion Voting Systems, a leading provider of voting machines that has become the target of rightwing conspiracy theorists and big lie merchants. Dominion has sued several purveyors of false claims that its products were used to swing the election from Trump to Biden.“Dominion Voting Systems and related companies are owned or heavily controlled and influenced by foreign agents, countries, and interests,” the draft order falsely claims.The draft also singles out Antrim county, Michigan. Claims that voting machines in that county were compromised have been thoroughly rebutted, including by state election authorities.A second document was also leaked to Politico from the new mountain of paperwork received by the 6 January committee. Titled Remarks on National Healing, it appears to be the text of a speech Trump never delivered.The tone of the speech is striking because it stands in stark contrast to the approach Trump actually adopted in the wake of the Capitol violence. Still president for two weeks, he attempted to belittle the significance of the day.Had this alternative speech been given, Trump would have sent out a very different message. It describes 6 January as a “heinous attack” that left him “outraged and sickened by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem”.The text added: “The Demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy.”TopicsUS elections 2020Donald TrumpUS politicsUS voting rightsTrump administrationnewsReuse this content More

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      Mitch McConnell under fire after saying African Americans vote as much as 'Americans' – video

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      Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell has been criticised after saying that Black Americans vote ‘in just as high a percentage as Americans’. The comment came after Senate Democrats failed to pass voting rights protections in the run-up to this November’s midterm elections that will determine control of Congress in 2023. 
      A reporter asked McConnell if he had a message for voters of color who were concerned that, without the John R Lewis Voting Rights Act, they were not going to be able to vote in the midterm. ‘Well, the concern is misplaced because, if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans,’ McConnell said

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      The three lessons for the voting rights struggle from the latest Senate setback | Steve Phillips

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      Three lessons for the voting rights struggle from the latest Senate setbackSteve PhillipsThis latest defeat is not a fatal blow. The struggle for democracy is ongoing – and our fate has not been decided yet At the conclusion of the 1984 Democratic national convention, Jesse Jackson gathered his supporters and offered important perspective to those of us who had labored long and hard on his presidential campaign, telling us, “We’ve never gotten freedom at a convention. The convention is a comma, where you pause and go on. We’re going to keep fighting for freedom – at the polls, in the courts, in the streets.” And then he concluded by invoking the phrase made famous by Malcolm X – “Freedom, by any means necessary.”Seven ways Republicans are already undermining the 2024 election | David DaleyRead moreThis week’s fight in the US Senate over the voting rights bill is a comma in a much, much longer story. It is a story that started in 1619 when Africans were brought in chains to America’s shores to do the work that created the wealth that made many white people rich. It is a story encapsulated in the country’s 1790 Naturalization Act, one of the nation’s very first pieces of legislation, which stated that citizenship is reserved to “free white person[s]” (a law that defined US immigration policy until 1965). It is a story that saw hundreds of thousands of Americans who wanted to be able to continue to buy and sell Black bodies go to war and kill hundreds of thousands of other Americans who sought to end slavery.At its core, it is the story of the centuries-long struggle over whether the United States of America should be a multiracial democracy, or whether it should be a white nationalist country.Reflecting on the defeat in the Senate, three dominant realities can help us make sense of what just happened and determine where we go from here.First, the cold, hard truth is that the majority of white politicians have always been reluctant to make America a multiracial democracy (between the House and Senate votes, 60% of the white members of Congress voted against the John Lewis Voting Rights Act).Passage of the 15th amendment itself, guaranteeing the right to vote, was a ferocious battle that raged over months and multiple votes in 1869. Nearly 100 years later, in 1965, it was only after Jimmie Lee Jackson, Viola Liuzzo and James Reeb lost their lives in the struggle for voting rights that Congress was finally moved to pass the current Voting Rights Act. None of this unwillingness to protect the right to vote is new, and we should be disappointed – but not surprised – at the conduct of the country’s elected officials during this week in which we supposedly honored Martin Luther King Jr.The second reality is that many top Democratic strategists and leaders are behind the times and bad at math. The fact that Democrats put their political capital behind an infrastructure bill before taking on the task of protecting democracy was a race-based political calculation. The infrastructure bill was an attempt by Democrats to woo the support of white swing voters by emphasizing bipartisanship and brick and mortar, race-neutral, projects. The scary policies associated with people of color – things like reimagining public safety, providing a pathway to citizenship for immigrants and combating aggressive voter suppression – were downplayed.The mathematical calculation in determining that sequence of priorities was off from the start. Beyond the morality of the matter, from a crass realpolitik point of view, voting rights protections and ending whites-first immigration practices bring more people of color into the electorate. And people of color vote Democratic.The third, and most hopeful, reality is that progressives can still win, and we need look no further than Georgia for inspiration and instruction about what is possible even in the face of opposition from the right and lack of conviction on the left. Stacey Abrams is very good at math, and she has been working for a decade to engage the 1.1 million people of color who were not voting in a state where elections were routinely decided by 230,000 votes. On the right, Republican Brian Kemp, who was secretary of state during his gubernatorial run against Abrams, improperly purged 340,000 people from the rolls in the 2018 election Abrams lost by 54,723 votes.Abrams did not treat her defeat as a fatal blow; she saw it as a comma, and she went on to continue organizing and building a statewide network of groups and activists who could turn out large numbers of voters of color. For a long time, the leaders in Georgia soldiered on without support from top Democrats who couldn’t calculate the advantage of focusing resources in a state where the strategy centered on expanding the number of people of color voting. By late summer 2020, for example, Senate Majority Pac had invested zero dollars in Georgia while spending $7m in 85% white Iowa. Biden himself expressed amazement at his victory there, saying on election night, “We’re still in the game in Georgia. That’s not one we expected.”The Georgia model elected Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff and delivered the current Senate control to the Democrats. In 2022, it can expand that majority, dramatically decreasing the dependence on Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Massive investments in civic engagement organizations and voter mobilization efforts in Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin can propel Val Demings, Cheri Beasley and Mandela Barnes to victories in their races against Republican incumbent senators.This week’s defeat of the Voting Rights Act is one chapter in a long story. While a sad chapter, it need not be the last chapter, and by applying the lessons from Georgia’s journey, we can actually write a happy ending over the next several years.
      Steve Phillips is host of Democracy in Color with Steve Phillips. His forthcoming book, How We End the Civil War, is due out this year. He is a Guardian US columnist
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      The not-surprising, very bad defeat of Biden’s attempt to protect voting | The fight to vote

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      The not-surprising, very bad defeat of Biden’s attempt to protect votingThe reason it failed is simple: 50 Republicans didn’t support the proposals and two Democrats opposed changing the filibuster Hello, and happy Thursday,It’s difficult to figure out what to say about the kind-of-surprising-yet- not-really-surprising-at-all collapse of Democrats’ effort to pass sweeping voting rights legislation.Get the latest updates on voting rights in the Guardian’s Fight to vote newsletterYes, the defeat is a major blow to Joe Biden, who spent significant political capital over the last few weeks, pushing the bill. Yes, the defeat makes Democrats, who pledged to protect voting rights when they took control of the US Senate last year, look incapable of governing. Yes, it’s disturbing to see just one Republican – Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – voice any kind of support for sweeping protections to support the right to vote. Yes, it’s astonishing to see two moderate Democrats block the bill because of their unflinching support for an arcane Senate rule.Yes, the defeat comes at a uniquely dangerous moment for democracy.There are plenty of takes to go around about why this push didn’t succeed – and I expect there will be more in the coming days. Biden should have pushed harder on voting rights sooner. Democrats were too ambitious in their proposal. Democrats should have focused on a narrower fix to the Electoral Count Act.Some of this thinking falls into what Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth, calls the “green lantern theory” of the presidency – a belief that the president can do anything, persuade anyone, if they try hard enough. In the end, the reason the voting rights bills failed was simple – 50 Republicans didn’t support the proposals and two Democrats didn’t support changing the filibuster. After watching the fight in Washington play out over the last few weeks, I’m not sure there’s anything Chuck Schumer or Biden could have done to change that. Maybe I’m wrong.That doesn’t mean that the 50 Republicans who blocked the bill should evade scrutiny. As others have noted, 16 current GOP senators voted to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act in 2006, but oppose the current bill, which would update the most powerful part of the law. Republicans have said Congress has no constitutional role in elections, ignoring a provision in Article I that explicitly authorizes Congress to set federal election rules.But the thing that’s stuck with me the most over the last week is an idea that undergirded the entire voting rights debate, sometimes spoken out loud and sometimes unsaid – the idea that voter suppression just isn’t that bad right now.I saw it a few months ago when an unnamed White House adviser told the Atlantic Democrats would figure out how to out-organize new voter restrictions (“show us what the rules are and we will figure out a way to educate our voters and make sure they understand how they can vote and we will get them out to vote”). Biden made a similar comment on Wednesday afternoon, saying “no matter how hard they make it for minorities to vote, I think you’re going to see them willing to stand in line and defy the attempt to keep them from being able to vote.”I saw it when Republican senators consistently touted that 94% of Americans said it was easy to vote in 2020 and that turnout was higher than ever.And I saw it on Tuesday, when Joe Manchin, one of two key Democratic holdouts on the filibuster said no one was going to be blocked from voting. “The laws are there, and the rules are there, and basically the government, the government will stand behind them and give them the right to vote,” Manchin said. “We act like we are going to obstruct people from voting; that is not going to happen.”Of course, there’s a mountain of evidence that cuts against all this. Election officials in Texas are rejecting an astronomically high number of absentee ballot requests after the state imposed new restrictions. After Georgia enacted new limits on the availability of drop boxes, the number of voters who used them dropped significantly.Republican lawmakers across the country are also redrawing electoral districts in a way that weakens the influence of Black, Hispanic, and Asian voters, especially in rapidly diversifying places. It’s an invisible form of voter suppression, but perhaps the most powerful, because the votes of those affected will matter less.I had this in mind when Senator Kyrsten Sinema, another Democratic holdout, argued on the Senate floor that passing voting rights legislation would not get at the underlying ills of political division in the US. It was a good line in her speech that just didn’t match up with reality. A provision in the Democratic voting rights bill prohibits severe partisan gerrymandering – something that would go a long way towards fostering more bipartisan compromise.At almost the same time the voting rights bill was taking place on Wednesday, the election board in Lincoln county, a rural and heavily GOP Georgia county near Augusta, was meeting to vote on a plan to close six of seven polling locations. Residents there have been organizing for weeks to block the move, saying that many in the county lack transportation and would have to drive far to get to the single polling location. The county says closing the polling places will save money and make it easier to administer elections. The plan stalled Wednesday evening, but it’s the type of thing that the federal government would have more oversight over if Democrats were able to pass their bill.“If it happens here and they’re successful, maybe we’re the pilot,” said the Rev Denise Freeman, a longtime resident who has been fighting the closures. “Maybe we’re the showcase for the rest of the world to disenfranchise voters so select people can stay in power.”Also worth watching …
      I interviewed Martin Luther King III and his daughter Yolanda about what comes next in the fight for voting rights.
      Governor Ron DeSantis is proposing a massive new state agency to investigate election crimes, even though there’s little evidence of fraud in Florida.
      Preparations for the upcoming Texas primary are a bit of a mess as officials struggle to implement the state’s new voting restrictions. Officials have reported rejecting high percentages of mail-in ballot applications.
      The Ohio supreme court struck down GOP-drawn maps for both the state legislature and Congress, saying they were so partisan they violated the state constitution.
      Republicans in Virginia and Arizona have introduced a slew of new voter restrictions.
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      Democrats fail to advance voting rights law as Senate holdouts defend filibuster

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      Democrats fail to advance voting rights law as Senate holdouts defend filibusterSweeping protections for voters, already passed by House and backed by Biden, fail to clear 60-vote procedural hurdle Senate Democrats failed again to pass sweeping new voting protections on Wednesday, in what may be the most brutal blow yet to efforts to strengthen protections for voters at a perilous moment for US democracy.Just as they have done four other times in recent months, all 50 Republicans united in their opposition to the measure. They relied on the filibuster, a Senate rule that requires 60 votes to advance legislation to a final vote.Bernie Sanders suggests he may support primary challengers against Manchin and SinemaRead moreDespite heavy pressure from Joe Biden and fellow Democrats, two senators, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, have dug in defending the measure, preventing Democrats from getting rid of it.In a rebuke to Biden, Sinema gave a speech on the Senate floor last week making it clear she would not support changes to the filibuster. Manchin has also consistently made his support clear. “I will not vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster. 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,” he said in a speech on Wednesday.Their opposition set up a showdown as the ultimately doomed bill was taken up for discussion on Wednesday. Late in the evening, Republicans used the filibuster to vote to end debate on the bill, effectively blocking it from advancing. Immediately afterwards, Democrats moved to hold a vote to try and change the filibuster rules anyway. The effort failed 52-48, with Manchin and Sinema voting with all 50 Republicans to preserve the filibuster. Sinema loudly said “aye” when it was her turn to vote in favor of preserving the filibuster changes.“I am profoundly disappointed that the United States Senate has failed to stand up for our democracy. I am disappointed — but I am not deterred,” Biden said in a statement.“Our Administration will continue to fight to pass federal legislation to secure the right to vote. We will not stop fighting against the anti-voter legislation that Republican legislatures continue to push at the state level—and to champion and support state and local elected officials who work to enact pro-voter legislation,” Kamala Harris said in a separate statement.“Isn’t protecting voting rights, the most fundamental wellspring of this democracy, more important than a rule?” Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, said just before the vote on the filibuster change.Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia said Democrats were seeking to restore a “talking filibuster”, where senators have to hold the floor of the US senate to prevent a vote on legislation.“We’re going to take up a rules reform proposal that will not blow up the senate,” he said on the Senate floor Wednesday evening. “It switches the secret filibuster into a public filibuster. It makes both parties work on the floor to get the kind of extended public debate we joined together to seek.”Senator Angus King of Maine, who once defended the filibuster, said the process that was in place was a “second cousin once removed of the filibuster”.“I’d venture to say if we had the rules we have today, we wouldn’t have the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act,” he said.Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, described Wednesday as “in all likelihood, the most important day in the history of the Senate.” He said the Democratic proposal was just “smoke and mirrors”, and accused Democrats of undertaking a plot to “to break the Senate”.The voting rights measure has failed before, but Wednesday marks the first time they have taken a formal vote on changing the filibuster. Its likely failure marks a profound setback for Biden’s presidential agenda. The president spent an enormous amount of political capital in recent weeks pressuring Manchin and Sinema to support rule changes to the filibuster, giving a speech in Atlanta and traveling to Capitol Hill to try to get support. In stirring remarks just before the vote on the voting rights bill, Raphael Warnock, a Democrat from Georgia, said senators could not praise the legacy of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr while voting against voting rights. “You cannot remember MLK and dismember his legacy at the same time,” Warnock said. “I will not sit quietly while some make Dr King a victim of identity theft.”“Those of us who are students of Dr King, I know I have, often wonder ‘what would I have done if I was alive during the civil rights movement?’ I know that we all would like to think we had a fraction, just a small fraction of the courage it took for John Lewis to cross that Edmund Pettus Bridge,” he said. “Well, for those of us who serve in the United States Senate in this moment, in this moral moment, we do not have to wonder … we don’t have to wonder what we would have done. I submit that what we would have done back then we are doing right now. History is watching us.”The bill that failed on Wednesday, Freedom to Vote: John R Lewis Act, combined two major voting rights bills into a single mega bill.It would have set a national baseline for election access, guaranteeing 15 days of early voting as well as online voter registration. It protected local election officials from harassment and partisan interference in their jobs and curbed gerrymandering, the severe distortion of partisan district lines. It also restored a key piece of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that required places with a history of voting discrimination to get their changes approved by either the justice department or a federal court in Washington before they go into effect.The bill’s failure comes as states across the US have waged an aggressive effort to restrict voting access after the 2020 election, which saw record turnout. In total, 19 states have passed 34 bills that restrict voting access, making it harder to request and return a mail-in ballot, among other measures, even though there was no evidence of fraud, either in mail-in voting or otherwise, in 2020.Many of those efforts are obviously aimed at Black and other minority voters who helped Democrats win in 2020, activists say. As state legislatures reconvene, Republican lawmakers are proposing even more new restrictions.At the same time, Republicans in state legislatures are redrawing electoral districts at the state legislative and congressional level to virtually guarantee their re-election for the next decade. Seeing Democratic gains in traditionally Republican districts, Republicans have redrawn the lines to simply make many districts uncompetitive for the next decade, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.It’s a strategy that has blunted the growing power of Black, Hispanic and Asian voters in places like the suburbs, which are rapidly diversifying. In North Carolina, for example, Republicans lowered the Black voting age population of a district long represented by GK Butterfield, a former judge who is Black. It will be harder for Black voters in that district to elect their candidate of choice and Butterfield has since announced he is retiring from Congress.There is also growing concern about what experts call election subversion – efforts to inject more partisanship into election administration and counting votes.Republicans are passing laws that give them more partisan control over key administrative roles and Trump allies who have embraced the myth of a stolen election are running for secretary of state in places such as Georgia, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada – a perch from which they could exert enormous unilateral control over election rules.Civil rights groups have waged an aggressive campaign, privately and publicly, trying to get Manchin and Sinema to support a filibuster change. “Let’s be honest, every voter suppression bill passed in the 19 states across the country has been passed by Republicans alone. If one party can dismantle our democracy on its own, the other party should muster the courage to safeguard it,” Derrick Johnson, the president and CEO of the NAACP, wrote in a letter to senators.TopicsUS voting rightsThe fight to voteUS SenateUS politicsDemocratsJoe ManchinnewsReuse this content More