Sen. Joe Manchin may have killed S. 1, the For The People Act, with his objections to the way the bill is currently drafted. This puts him at cross-purposes with virtually the entire Democratic Party and its constituents, and also makes him the chief enabler of the “Grim Reaper of Democracy,” Mitch McConnell. This is not a position he should want to be in.
Sen. Manchin is now trying to dig out of the deep hole that he has dug for himself. Talking Points Memo reports, Manchin And Murkowski Urge Bipartisan Reauthorization Of Voting Rights Act:
Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) on Monday urged Congress to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act [John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act] in an effort to demonstrate bipartisan support for the protection of voting rights.
In a letter to congressional leaders on Monday, Manchin and Murkowski said that voting rights should not become a partisan issue. [In what world do these senators live?]
“Inaction is not an option. Congress must come together – just as we have done time and again – to reaffirm our longstanding bipartisan commitment to free, accessible, and secure elections for all,” Manchin and Murkowski wrote. “We urge you to join us in calling for the bipartisan reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act through regular order. We can do this. We must do this.”
Manchin and Murkowski do not reference the new voting rights bill, S. 1 — the “For The People Act” that passed in the House and recently underwent a contentious markup in the Senate — in their letter, but instead hyped the reauthorization of the VRA, a less ambitious legislative move.
“We reflect not just on the positive impact this legislation has had on individual Americans’ ability to exercise their most fundamental right – the right to vote – and the strength of our democracy writ large, but on the important work we still have to do to realize that promise of ensuring the right of all to vote,” the senators wrote.
The Voting Rights Act has not been reauthorized since 2006. The Supreme Court, however, gutted the law [in Shelby County v. Holder (2013)] when it ruled that the [Section 4] formula set by Congress to determine whether state and local governments were required to get prior approval by the Justice Department for voting and election changes was outdated.
Note: Sen. Manchin has said that he wants preclearance to apply to all 50 states, not tied to a prior history of voter suppression. This is contrary to the “remedy” Chief Justice John Robert’s suggested in his opinion in Shelby County. This tees it up to strike down any renewal of the VRA again (unless Congress removes federal court jurisdiction in the bill).
Manchin and Murkowski’s letter comes amid Democrats’ push for the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would require states with a recent record of voting rights discrimination to get approval on a federal level before changes to election laws are implemented.
The letter also comes as Manchin faces backlash from progressives for being the only member of the Democratic caucus who did not support the “For the People Act,” a sweeping bill that would expand ballot access. The Democratic-led House passed the bill without GOP support in March.
The West Virginia senator has repeatedly argued that he does not support the “For the People Act” because, he claims, support from both sides of the aisle is needed to overhaul federal voting laws. Republicans have been unified in their opposition to Democrats’ sprawling democracy overhaul bill. During a Senate committee mark-up last week that lasted more than eight hours, Republicans issued partisan barbs about a Democratic “takeover” of elections and expressed their willingness to double down on President Trump’s “big lie” of a stolen presidential election.
Which just demonstrates how indefensible Sen. Manchin’s insistence on Republican support for the For The People Act is. He is allowing the domestic terrorists who engaged in a seditious insurrection on January 6 to decide the fate of this bill to save American democracy, and to exercise a minority veto (with his help), just as they tried to veto democracy on January 6.
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Senate Majority Leader Schumer, D-N.Y., shot down an effort from Sens. Manchin, D-W.Va., and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, to focus narrowly on reauthorizing the 1965 Voting Rights Act, instead championing the For the People Act as the more immediate fix for systemic problems in the U.S. electoral system. “CHUCK SCHUMER REJECTS JOE MANCHIN’S VOTING RIGHTS STRATEGY”, https://theintercept.com/2021/05/19/voting-election-reform-chuck-schumer-joe-manchin/
Schumer dismissed the Manchin gambit in unusually blunt terms. “Here’s the bottom line: … The Voting Rights Act is actually authorized until 2032, so their letter to us saying authorize it, well, it’s pretty much done,” Schumer told reporters during a press conference Tuesday. [Section 4 was struck down, negating Section 5 DOJ preclearance].
Justice Roberts’s decision instructed Congress that if the legislature wanted to re-implement preclearance, it would have to build a strong case over time that the states where it would apply, concentrated in the South, were indeed engaged in discriminatory voter suppression. Convincing an average observer of that reality would not be difficult, but Roberts, in his 2013 decision, effectively declared racism over.
Experts say reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act would be insufficient to address the restrictions to ballot access that Republicans are cheering in the states. Put simply: Because the Roberts court has already struck down preclearance, it could easily do so again.