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      Texas Republicans plot to resurrect restrictive voting bill after Democrats’ walkout

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      Republicans in Texas are already plotting to resurrect their fight for sweeping voting restrictions after Democratic lawmakers walked out of the state capitol and blocked an 11th-hour attempt to ram through legislation that would have made it harder to cast a ballot.Texas governor Greg Abbott – who leads the state’s domineering Republican majority – has announced he will include the high-stakes issue on his agenda when he reconvenes the legislature for a rapid-fire special session. He called the failure of the bill “deeply disappointing”.Abbott, who says “election integrity” remains an emergency in Texas, now plans to call a special session – essentially legislative overtime, where lawmakers consider issues on a sped-up timeline. When the session will begin remains unclear.But advocates are still painting last night’s historic show of force as an inflection point for the Texas legislature and America, when Democrats shirked business as usual for aggressive tactics that matched the urgency of a teetering democracy.“The fight you saw last night is the fight that will remain and continue,” state representative Trey Martinez Fischer, a Democrat representing San Antonio, told the Guardian. “That’s our commitment.”Senate Bill 7, an omnibus bill that restricts voter access, seemed almost destined to become law at the start of Texas’s legislative session, as powerful Republican leaders invoked baseless claims of “election integrity” to push for a virtual overhaul of the state’s already notoriously byzantine voting system.SB7 was one proposal among a larger blitz of at least 389 restrictive voting bills introduced across the country this legislative cycle, bolstered by Republicans’ unsubstantiated assertions of widespread voter fraud during last year’s election.The Texas bill drew ire from business leaders, voting rights advocates and left-leaning politicians, some of whom dubbed it “Jim Crow 2.0” and noted the disproportionate impact it would likely have on voters of color. But Republican lawmakers still strong-armed their way through procedural maneuvers and overnight votes, relying on backroom dealings and avoiding public scrutiny while advancing the legislation.“People want a fair system. And they saw what happened, and they know that this is a cynical attempt at holding onto power,” said Charlie Bonner, communications director at the civic engagement non-profit Move Texas.“These are people who are trying to stack the deck, and they’re doing it in the middle of the night.”SB7 has gone through a series of dizzying changes since it first passed the state senate in early April, culminating in a Frankenstein bill that attempted to reconcile both chambers’ priorities, plus add new provisions in the final stretch.The bill would have made it a state jail felony for a public official to proactively solicit or send vote by mail applications, restricted the use of drop boxes, banned 24-hour and drive-thru voting and lowered the bar for overturning an election, among other measures.After months of controversy, it was still teed up to meet a midnight deadline Sunday night, when it needed to clear the House to land on Abbott’s desk. But, after being silenced and boxed out of deliberations, Democrats decided to go nuclear, preventing the necessary quorum for a vote.“The eyes of the nation were watching Texas, and we wanted to make very clear that Texas Democrats would fight tooth and nail to defend voting rights,” Martinez Fischer said.Now, even as the regular legislative session concludes, the fight is far from over as Abbott plans his special session. Texas Lt Governor Dan Patrick has already endorsed Abbott’s plan, and state representative Briscoe Cain, who spearheaded the push for voter restrictions in the House, has tweeted that he was “ready to get back to work”.“They’re gonna want this really, really bad. They’re gonna want this probably even more now,” said Carisa Lopez, political director of the nonprofit watchdog Texas Freedom Network.But the special session also provides an opportunity for more scrutiny, especially after Republicans routinely relied on behind closed doors negotiations during the regular session, evading public testimony and accountability.“Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” Bonner said. “And so what we can do in this legislative process is shine a light on these bad actors and voter suppressors, and make them feel the pressure of the entire world watching what’s happening in Texas right now.” More

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      Texas Democrats’ late-night walkout scuppers Republican efforts to restrict voting rights

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      Texas Republican have failed in their efforts to push through one of the most restrictive voting measures in the US after Democrats walked out of the House at the last minute, leaving the bill languishing ahead of a midnight deadline.The exodus came at the instruction of Chris Turner, the House Democratic chairman, who told colleagues at 10.35pm to “take your key and leave the chamber discreetly”, referring to the key that locks the voting mechanism on their desks, the Washington Post reported.Democrat state representative Jessica González said after the walkout: “We decided to come together and say we weren’t going to take it.” She said she objected to the bill’s content and the way it was crafted with no input from her party. “We needed to be part of the process. Cutting us out completely – I mean this law will affect every single voter in Texas.”Fellow Democrat Carl Sherman said: “We’ve said for so many years that we want more people to participate in our democracy. And it just seems that’s not the case.”Governor Greg Abbott said the failure of the legislation was “deeply disappointing and concerning” but vowed to bring it back at a special session at an unspecified date.Republicans showed restraint in criticising Democrats for the move. Republican state representative Briscoe Cain, who carried the bill in the House, said: “I am disappointed that some members decided to break quorum. We all know what that meant. I understand why they were doing it, but we all took an oath to Texans that we would be here to do our jobs.”Less than 24 hours earlier, the bill seemed all but guaranteed to reach Abbott’s desk. The bill had passed in the Senate on party lines around 6am on Sunday, after eight hours of questioning by Democrats who had virtually no path to stop it. However, a Democrat walkout prevented a quorum in the House.In closed-door negotiations, Republicans added language to Senate Bill 7 that could make it easier for a judge to overturn an election. They also pushed back the start of Sunday voting, when many Black churchgoers go to the polls. The measure would also eliminate drive-thru voting and 24-hour polling centers, both of which Harris county, a Democratic stronghold, introduced last year.Critics say such measures suppress turnout among minorities likely to vote Democratic. On Sunday morning Hakeem Jeffries of New York, a member of Democratic leadership in the US House, called SB7 “shameful”.“Republicans clearly in Texas and throughout the country want to make it harder to vote and easier to steal an election,” he told CNN’s State of the Union. “That’s the only way that I can interpret the voter suppression epidemic that we see working its way from Georgia to Arizona to Texas and all across the country.”At a press conference held by the Texas Democratic party, national figures including former congressman Beto O’Rourke, former housing secretary Julián Castro and his brother Joaquin Castro, a serving congressman, sought to raise the alarm.“This is gonna make it harder for the average Texan to get out and cast their ballot whether they’re Republican or Democrat,” said Julián Castro. “But it is clearly aimed at people of colour, at Black and Hispanic Texas.“The Republican party is running scared because they know that this state is changing. Senate Bill 7 is an attempt by the Republican party to hold on to their power at the expense of everybody else. And we can’t let it stand.”Michael McCaul, a senior US House Republican from Texas, told CNN he thought the law “may be more of an optics issue, restoring confidence with the American people. In my state you actually do believe that there was tremendous fraud.”There was not. Texas has only one pending voter fraud case arising from the 2020 election. Nonetheless it is the last big battleground in Republican efforts to tighten voting laws, driven by Donald Trump’s lie that the presidential election was stolen. Joe Biden on Saturday compared the Texas bill to election changes in Georgia and Arizona, as “an assault on democracy”.Since Trump’s defeat, at least 14 states have enacted restrictive voting laws, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. It has counted nearly 400 bills nationwide.The vote in the Texas Senate came a short time after a final version of the bill was made public. Republicans suspended rules that normally prohibit taking a vote on a bill that has not been posted for 24 hours. Democrats protested.The bill would empower partisan poll watchers by allowing more access to polling places and threatening criminal penalties against officials who restrict their movement. Another provision allows a judge to void an election outcome if the number of fraudulent votes could change the result, regardless of whether it was proved that fraud affected the outcome.Election officials would face penalties including felony charges for sending mail voting applications to people who did not request one. The Texas District and County Attorneys Association counted at least 16 new, expanded or enhanced crimes.Republicans are also moving to prohibit Sunday voting before 1pm, which critics call an attack on “souls to the polls”, a get-out-the-vote tactic used by Black congregations nationwide and dating back to the civil rights movement. Asked why Sunday voting couldn’t begin sooner, Texas Republican Bryan Hughes said: “Election workers want to go to church too.”Colin Allred, a US representative from Dallas, told the press conference Sunday was “one of the darkest days” for democracy in America. “This isn’t legislation,” he said. “It’s discrimination.”Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic majority leader in the US Senate, has said he will bring the For the People Act, a federal measure to protect voting rights, to the floor next month. But it has little chance of beating the filibuster, the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome the Republican minority. More

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      Texas Democrats say Republican voting bill marks ‘dark day for democracy’

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      Texas Democrats called Sunday “one of the darkest days” for American democracy, after Republicans pushed one of the most restrictive voting measures in the US to the cusp of law, rushing the bill through the state Senate in the middle of the night.Senate Bill 7 was passed on party lines around 6am, after eight hours of questioning by Democrats who had virtually no path to stop it. It was due to receive a vote in the House later on Sunday before reaching Governor Greg Abbott, who was expected to sign it.In closed-door negotiations, Republicans added language that could make it easier for a judge to overturn an election. They also pushed back the start of Sunday voting, when many Black churchgoers go to the polls. The measure would also eliminate drive-thru voting and 24-hour polling centers, both of which Harris county, a Democratic stronghold, introduced last year.Critics say such measures suppress turnout among minorities likely to vote Democratic. On Sunday morning Hakeem Jeffries of New York, a member of Democratic leadership in the US House, called SB7 “shameful”.“Republicans clearly in Texas and throughout the country want to make it harder to vote and easier to steal an election,” he told CNN’s State of the Union. “That’s the only way that I can interpret the voter suppression epidemic that we see working its way from Georgia to Arizona to Texas and all across the country.”At a press conference held by the Texas Democratic party, national figures including former congressman Beto O’Rourke, former housing secretary Julián Castro and his brother Joaquin Castro, a serving congressman, sought to raise the alarm.“This is gonna make it harder for the average Texan to get out and cast their ballot whether they’re Republican or Democrat,” said Julián Castro. “But it is clearly aimed at people of colour, at Black and Hispanic Texas.“The Republican party is running scared because they know that this state is changing. Senate Bill 7 is an attempt by the Republican party to hold on to their power at the expense of everybody else. And we can’t let it stand.”Michael McCaul, a senior US House Republican from Texas, told CNN he thought the law “may be more of an optics issue, restoring confidence with the American people. In my state you actually do believe that there was tremendous fraud.”There was not. Texas has only one pending voter fraud case arising from the 2020 election. Nonetheless it is the last big battleground in Republican efforts to tighten voting laws, driven by Donald Trump’s lie that the presidential election was stolen. Joe Biden on Saturday compared the Texas bill to election changes in Georgia and Arizona, as “an assault on democracy”.Since Trump’s defeat, at least 14 states have enacted restrictive voting laws, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. It has counted nearly 400 bills nationwide.The vote in the Texas Senate came a short time after a final version of the bill was made public. Republicans suspended rules that normally prohibit taking a vote on a bill that has not been posted for 24 hours. Democrats protested.The bill would empower partisan poll watchers by allowing more access to polling places and threatening criminal penalties against officials who restrict their movement. Another provision allows a judge to void an election outcome if the number of fraudulent votes could change the result, regardless of whether it was proved that fraud affected the outcome.Election officials would face penalties including felony charges for sending mail voting applications to people who did not request one. The Texas District and County Attorneys Association counted at least 16 new, expanded or enhanced crimes.Republicans are also moving to prohibit Sunday voting before 1pm, which critics call an attack on “souls to the polls”, a get-out-the-vote tactic used by Black congregations nationwide and dating back to the civil rights movement. Asked why Sunday voting couldn’t begin sooner, Texas Republican Bryan Hughes said: “Election workers want to go to church too.”State representative Nicole Collier, chair of the Texas Legislative Black Caucus, was one of three Democrats picked to negotiate the final bill. None signed it. She said she saw a draft around 11pm on Friday which was different than one received earlier and was asked to sign the next morning.Colin Allred, a US representative from Dallas, told the press conference Sunday was “one of the darkest days” for democracy in America.“This isn’t legislation,” he said. “It’s discrimination.”Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic majority leader in the US Senate, has said he will bring the For the People Act, a federal measure to protect voting rights, to the floor next month. But it has little chance of beating the filibuster, the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome the Republican minority.In an emotional appeal in support of the For the People Act, O’Rourke cited the example of civil rights legislation under President Lyndon Johnson, a Texan, in the 1960s.Calling the new federal bill “a Voting Rights Act for our day”, he said passing it would “protect the sanctity of the ballot box and make sure that no state legislature can keep us from voting. So I hope after this good fight is fought in Texas, that we direct all of our energy and all of our focus on our friends in Washington DC, who like they did in 1965 can save American democracy.”With centrist Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona opposed to filibuster reform, that seems unlikely. More

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      Supreme court justice Stephen Breyer: Democrats must ‘get Republicans talking’

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      The supreme court justice Stephen Breyer has told young Americans Democrats facing Republican intransigence, obstruction and outright attacks on democracy should “get ‘em talking”, in search of compromise and progress.Breyer was speaking to middle- and high-school students on Friday, in an event organised by the National Constitution Center.The same day, Republicans in the Senate deployed the filibuster, by which the minority can thwart the will of the majority, to block the establishment of a 9/11-style commission to investigate the attack on the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump on 6 January.Thomas Kean, who led the 9/11 panel, told the Guardian the Republican move was “democracy’s loss”.From the White House, Joe Biden faces Republican reluctance to engage on his plans for investment in infrastructure and the pandemic-battered economy. Amid concerted attacks on voting rights in Republican states, federal bills to protect such rights seem unlikely to pass the Senate.“You need that Republican’s support?” Breyer told the listening students. “Talk to them … You say, ‘What do you think? My friend, what do you think?’ Get ’em talking. Once they start talking eventually they’ll say something you agree with.”Democrats do not agree with Trump’s lie that his election defeat by Biden was the result of electoral fraud, which fuelled the deadly attack on the Capitol. Nor do they agree with Republican attempts to overturn Roe v Wade, the 1973 supreme court ruling which safeguards a woman’s right to abortion.The court has a 6-3 conservative majority, after Republicans ripped up precedent to block Barack Obama’s final appointment then installed three justices under Trump, in the last case reversing their own position on appointments in the last year of a presidency.Breyer was speaking less than two weeks after the court agreed to hear a major challenge to abortion rights.The case, which the justices will hear in their next term, beginning in October, involves an attempt by Mississippi to revive a law that bans the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy.In 2019 the conservative Clarence Thomas, who has backed abortion restrictions, urged the court to feel less bound to upholding precedent. Asked about the value of adhering to past rulings, Breyer said the court should overturn precedent only in the “rare case where it’s really necessary” and said law is about stability.“The law might not be perfect but if you’re changing it all the time people won’t know what to do, and the more you change it the more people will ask to have it changed, and the more the court hears that, the more they’ll change it.”Many on the left seek change on the court, in the form of Breyer’s retirement. After the death of the progressive champion Ruth Bader Ginsburg at 87 last September, Breyer, at 82, is the oldest judge on the panel. Ginsburg was replaced by Amy Coney Barrett, a strict Catholic widely seen as likely to favour overturning precedent on abortion.Brett Kavanaugh, another conservative justice, was installed by Republicans after Anthony Kennedy retired, a move supported by the Trump White House. Kennedy was conservative but a swing vote on key rulings regarding individual rights. Kavanaugh, once an aide to President George W Bush, is more reliably rightwing.Breyer told the students, aged between 11 and 18, that as part of his daily routine he watches reruns of M*A*S*H, a hit sitcom that ran from 1972 to 1983. He also rides a stationary bike and meditates.Questioned about deepening polarisation some fear may tear the US apart, Breyer said he was “basically optimistic”. For all of its flaws, he said, American democracy is “better than the alternatives”.He also urged his listeners to put “unfortunate things” in historical context.“It’s happened before,” he said. “This is not the first time that people have become discouraged with the democratic process. This is not the first time that we’ve had real racism in this country. It used to be slavery before that.” More

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      ‘Wrong and un-American’: Biden blasts Texas Republicans’ SB7 voting bill

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      Joe Biden has condemned as “wrong and un-American” a Texas state bill set to pass into law which the president said “attacks the sacred right to vote”, particularly among minorities.The bill, known as SB7, clamps down on measures such as drive-through voting and voting on Sundays. It would also empower partisan poll-watchers. Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, has said he will sign it. Democrats have said they will challenge it in court.The bill follows moves in other Republican-controlled states which sponsors insist merely seek to guard against voter fraud but which are seen by most analysts to be aimed at restricting voting by sections of the population which tend to vote Democratic.According to the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice, nearly 400 such bills have been filed this year across the US, in 14 states.Biden has already blasted such measures, for instance calling laws in Georgia “Jim Crow in the 21st century”, a reference to the system of racist segregation which remained in place for 100 years after the civil war.As in other states, major corporations have warned Texas that SB7 could harm democracy and the economy. Republicans have shrugged off such objections and in some cases ripped business leaders for speaking out.The two Republicans who put SB7 together, Texas senator Bryan Hughes and representative Briscoe Cain, called the bill “one of the most comprehensive and sensible election reform bills” in state history.In a joint statement, they said: “Even as the national media minimises the importance of election integrity, the Texas legislature has not bent to headlines or corporate virtue signalling.”Biden countered: “Today, Texas legislators put forth a bill that joins Georgia and Florida in advancing a state law that attacks the sacred right to vote. It’s part of an assault on democracy that we’ve seen far too often this year –and often disproportionately targeting Black and brown Americans.“It’s wrong and un-American. In the 21st century, we should be making it easier, not harder, for every eligible voter to vote.”Republicans have acted to tighten voting laws as the man Biden beat in the presidential election, Donald Trump, continues to dominate GOP politics and to claim his defeat was the result of mass electoral fraud, a lie repeatedly thrown out of court.On Saturday, Biden said Congress should pass two federal measures, the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Both face failure in a Senate split 50-50 and where key Democrats have said they will not support moves to abolish the filibuster, the 60-vote threshold by which the minority can block legislation.Trump’s lies about the election fuelled the deadly attack on the US Capitol by his supporters on 6 January. On Friday, Senate Republicans used the filibuster to block the formation of a 9/11-style commission to investigate that riot.Regarding the Texas bill, Biden said he “continue[d] to call on all Americans, of every party in persuasion, to stand up for our democracy and protect the right to vote and the integrity of our elections”.Prominent Texas Democrats were equally quick to register their dismay.Julián Castro, a former US housing secretary and candidate for the presidential nomination, said: “The final draft of Texas Republicans’ voter suppression bill is as bad as you can get.”SB7, he said, “restricts registration, absentee, weekend voting and polling hours … ends curb-side voting and discourages rides to polls” and includes a “disability check” for mailed ballots.“We must defeat SB7,” Castro said.The former congressman and Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke, who also ran for the presidential nomination and like Castro is seen as a potential candidate for governor, thanked Biden for supporting voting rights in the state.“As you said, we should be making it easier, not harder, for every eligible voter to vote,” he wrote. “The only way to do that now is by passing the For the People Act.”Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, has said he will force a vote on that measure in June.The Texas Democratic party called SB7 a “Frankenstein’s monster”. In an emailed statement, Rose Clouston, the party’s voter protection director, said: “A bedrock principle of our democracy is that voters pick their leaders. However, right now, Texas Republicans are trying to hand pick their voters.”Sarah Labowitz, policy and advocacy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, told the New York Times SB7 was “a ruthless piece of legislation”, as “it targets voters of colour and voters with disabilities, in a state that’s already the most difficult place to vote in the country.” More

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      The Democrat standing in the way of his party’s efforts to protect voting rights

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterHappy Thursday,For months, Democrats in Congress have remained united behind passing the For the People Act, legislation that would amount to the most sweeping protections for voting rights in a generation.But those efforts – which would ensure automatic and same-day registration, limit severe partisan gerrymandering and mandate new transparency in political donations – appear to be hitting a wall. “Failure is very much an option – it is, in fact, the most likely one,” the Washington Post reported bluntly earlier this month.The senator getting in Democrats’ way is one of their own: Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, who has publicly signaled recently that he does not back the bill and wants bipartisan support for it. Manchin also does not favor getting rid of the filibuster, a procedural rule that requires 60 votes for legislation to advance in the Senate, making it nearly impossible for Democrats to pass this bill or any other without support from 10 Republicans. Even after six months of an unprecedented Republican effort to restrict voting rights across the country, Manchin still isn’t budging.My colleague Daniel Strauss and I wrote about this quagmire for Democrats this week. We asked senators and voting rights groups how exactly they might win over Manchin and how they plan to move forward. They told us they were still optimistic about the bill’s prospects and they thought Manchin would ultimately come around as public pressure grew.“There is a ticking timebomb,” said Wendy Weiser, the director of the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice, which supports the bill. If it doesn’t pass “it will be a significant failure for the country, for the American people … I don’t think Joe Manchin wants that on himself.”Senator Alex Padilla, a Democrat from California, told us he saw a “glimmer of hope” last week. He pointed to a letter Manchin released with Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, calling to reinstate a provision in the 1965 Voting Rights Act that would require states to get election changes approved by the federal government before they went into effect. Such provision was originally included in the Voting Rights Act and forestalled discriminatory changes to voting rules, but in 2013 it was gutted by the US supreme court. “Inaction is not an option,” Manchin and Murkowski wrote.Weiser and other voting rights advocates also pointed to that letter as evidence that Manchin understood the stakes of acting to protect voting rights. But they said it would not be acceptable to treat restoring pre-clearance as a substitute for the more sweeping voting rights bill. Pre-clearance will be a guardrail against future discrimination, they said, but the For the People Act would set a national floor for voting standards.“It has to be both,” said Stephen Spaulding, senior counsel for public policy and government affairs at Common Cause, a government watchdog group. “They’re both critically important pieces of legislation and it’s a false choice to say I’m for the other and not for this. Because only together will we fully rebalance the state of voting in America to favor access.”Also worth watching …
      The Republican effort to review 2.1m ballots cast in Arizona’s largest county is getting even stranger. One of the subcontractors that was involved in running the audit is no longer participating, the Arizona Republic reported on Tuesday. The same firm had previously been hired by the non-profit of Sidney Powell, a Trump ally who promulgated lies about the 2020 election, to do an audit in Pennsylvania.
      There is growing concern that conservative activists are seeking to emulate the Arizona review elsewhere, including in California, Michigan and New Hampshire. Experts say the efforts in Arizona are so shoddy as to be illegitimate, and are simply an effort to sow more uncertainty about the 2020 election results.
      Texas Republicans are in the final stages of negotiating new voting rights restrictions. The Texas Tribune has a really good analysis of how that law would limit the number of polling places in Democratic-leaning areas as well as areas where there is a high share of voters of color. More

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      ‘A ticking timebomb’: Democrats’ push for voting rights law faces tortuous path

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      After six months of aggressive Republican efforts to restrict voting access, Democrats are facing new questions about how they will actually pass voting rights reforms through Congress.The most recent hand-wringing comes as Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democratic senator, made clear earlier this month he still is not on board with the For the People Act, which would require early voting, automatic and same-day registration, and prevent the severe manipulation of district boundaries for partisan gain.Senate Democrats, including Manchin, met privately on Wednesday to map out a path forward on the bill, which has already passed the US House. They were mostly mum about the discussions of that meeting but overall resolute that some kind of voting rights bill has to pass. Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said: “It was a really productive meeting.”Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia said: “I think members of the caucus understand the urgency and we’re focused on getting something passed. We have an obligation to the American people to find a way to protect our democracy.”Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterManchin’s opposition comes at a critical moment when there is escalating concern about aggressive state Republican efforts to curtail access to the ballot. Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa and Montana have all put new restrictions in place this year. Many see this as an existential moment for the Democratic party and fear that Republicans will permanently reap the benefits of a distorted electoral system if Democrats cannot pass federal legislation. There is heightened urgency to act quickly so that crucial protections can be in place when the once-per-decade redistricting process gets under way later this year.“There is a ticking timebomb,” said Wendy Weiser, the director of the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice, which supports the bill. “It will be a significant failure if [Congress] doesn’t pass these two pieces of major voting legislation. It will be a significant failure for the country, for the American people … I don’t think Joe Manchin wants that on himself.”Manchin is concerned the bill still does not have enough Republican buy-in, and favors an alternative piece of legislation that would reauthorize the Voting Rights Act and require election changes to be pre-approved by the federal government. Some observers say that solely passing that bill, named the John R Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, would be inadequate to undo the suppressive laws that have gone into effect and that trying to get bipartisan support for the measure is a fool’s errand, given the Republican party’s embrace of Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. Senator Mitch McConnell has also taken a personal interest in trying to sink the bill, saying it would be devastating to Republicans, McClatchy reported earlier this month.The West Virginia senator’s concern highlights an even bigger question looming over the Democratic party – how to pass any priority legislation with only, at best, 51 votes in the Senate. Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, has set August as a deadline for passing a voting rights bill – a deadline the White House has embraced.Schumer has repeatedly said “failure is not an option”. But absent a shift on eliminating the filibuster, a procedural rule in the Senate that requires 60 votes to advance legislation, failure seems to be the most likely option, the Washington Post reported. Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, another Democrat who does not support eliminating the filibuster, bluntly asked the caucus what the plan on the legislation was earlier this month.“The goal of the authors is to get it signed into law. I don’t see a path,” one Democratic senator vented to Politico.In the past few months it seemed like a showdown over the filibuster would come on a voting rights bill. Now, though, some Democrats think that showdown may come over a vote on a 6 January commission to investigate the mob attack on the Capitol. In both cases Democrats don’t seem to have the votes to overcome a filibuster which would spur a showdown.“Part of what I’ve heard is let’s not race to abolish or even reform the filibuster rule because frankly there hasn’t been a ‘casualty on the floor of the Senate’,” said Senator Alex Padilla of California, a former top elections official in his home state. “There’s no bill this session that has died because of the filibuster rule. So what might it be that breaks the filibuster’s back? Is it the infrastructure package? Is it the voting rights bill? Is it a climate change bill?”Manchin’s comments are being closely watched because Democrats cannot afford to lose his vote – or that of any other senator – since they control only 50 seats in the Senate. Manchin has said he does not favor getting rid of the filibuster.But outside groups supporting the For the People Act say they are unfazed by Manchin’s recalcitrance. They remain optimistic that he will eventually come around to support it.“Reports of the bill’s death are very premature. It is still the priority for Democrats in Congress,” Weiser said.“We remain optimistic about the path forward for this bill,” said Tiffany Muller, the president and executive director of End Citizens United/Let America Vote, which is backing a $30m effort to support the bill.Manchin has pointed to a reauthorization of preclearance requirements as a better way to protect voting rights than a sweeping voting bill. Last week, he released a letter with the Republican senator Lisa Murkowski calling on Congress to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act, including the preclearance provision gutted by the US supreme court in 2013. “Inaction is not an option,” they wrote.That letter was a “glimmer of hope”, said Padilla.“All the more reason to continue to make the case not just in Senate chambers but in the court of public opinion across the country,” he added, stressing that Democratic efforts to engage in genuine debate would address Manchin’s concern that a real attempt at bipartisanship should be made.Voting groups say it would be a mistake to only pass a voting rights reauthorization. While current proposals would only require certain places with documented evidence of voting discrimination to be subject to preclearance, Manchin told ABC he thinks every state should have to get its voting changes preapproved. Republicans are unlikely to support such an idea. “That’s just not actually in the cards,” Weiser said.“It’s a false choice. It has to be both,” said Stephen Spaulding, senior counsel for public policy and government affairs at Common Cause, a government watchdog group. “They’re both critically important pieces of legislation and it’s a false choice to say I’m for the other and not for this. Because only together will we fully rebalance the state of voting in America to favor access.”Four House Democrats sent a letter to colleagues last week making a similar argument. Advocates are heartened by polling that shows the measure is extremely popular and the fact that Democrats have held together so far and brought the bill to the verge of a Senate floor vote despite some grumbling from their own caucus.“What you’re seeing is a commitment to a floor vote and getting people on record,” Spaulding said.If Democrats went into the 2022 midterms without doing anything to protect voting rights, it would be disastrous, advocates said.“Voters showed up in record numbers to choose new leadership. There were commitments made across multiple Congresses on both bills and so saying ‘we tried’ isn’t going to work,” Spaulding said.“If these bills weren’t to go to President Biden’s desk, they’d have … to articulate why they did nothing when they had the power to do so.” More

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      Liz Cheney won’t link Trump’s election lies to restrictive Republican voting laws

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      The Republican pariah Liz Cheney has repeatedly refused to admit a link between Donald Trump’s lies about voter fraud and restrictive voting laws being introduced in Republican states, telling an interviewer on Sunday night she will “never understand the resistance to voter ID”.“There’s a big difference between that and a president of the United States who loses an election after he tried to steal the election and refuses to concede,” said the Wyoming representative ejected from party leadership for opposing the former president.Laws tightening regulations on voter ID, voting by mail and even giving water to those waiting on line to vote have been passed or are close to passage in states from Georgia to Texas and beyond.Because of their disproportionate impact on minority voters – many of whom vote Democratic – Democrats including Joe Biden have compared such laws to Jim Crow segregation in southern states from the civil war to the civil rights era.Most in a Republican party under Trump’s grip reject such claims. Cheney has ranged herself against Trump but when pressured by Axios on HBO interviewer Jonathan Swan, she stayed in lockstep with her party.To Cheney’s remark about resistance to voter ID laws, Swan countered: “Even the Republican lieutenant governor of Georgia, Jeff Duncan, said … when this bill was started that the momentum was when Rudy Giuliani was testifying that the Georgia election was a sham.”Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, pursued the electoral fraud lie through an array of cases in states won by Biden, the vast majority thrown out of court.“Four hundred-some voting bills have been introduced,” Swan said, “90% by Republicans, supported by the Republican National Committee. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that after the election, this has happened.”Cheney said: “I think everybody should want a situation and a system where people who want to vote and ought to have the right to vote, vote, and people that don’t shouldn’t. And again I come back to things like voter ID.”Actual instances of voter fraud or attempted voter fraud are few and far between. Some involve Trump voters. Nonetheless, state Republican parties have pursued strict laws while in Arizona the GOP has gone so far as to conduct a highly controversial recount in the most populous county.“But what problems are [these laws] solving?” Swan asked. “What are all these states doing?”“Well,” said Cheney, “each state is different.”Swan asked what the problem was in Georgia, or Texas, or Florida.“I think you’ve got to look at each individual state law,” Cheney said.Swan said: “But you can’t divorce them from the context. Come on.”Cheney said: “But I think what we can all agree on is that what is happening right now is really dangerous.”Swan said: “I can agree with that.”Cheney switched back to her preferred subject – Trump’s refusal to concede defeat, which led to the deadly attack on the Capitol by his supporters on 6 January, over which more than 400 people have been charged, while Republicans in Congress oppose a 9/11-style investigation.“I think about 2000,” said the daughter of Dick Cheney, who became vice-president to George W Bush after a tight election that year.“I think about sitting on the inaugural platform in January of 2001 watching Al Gore. We’d won. I’m sure he didn’t think he had lost. We had fought this politically very, very intense battle. And he conceded. He did the right thing for this nation.“And that is one of the big differences between that and what we’re dealing with now and the danger of Donald Trump today.” More