On Monday morning, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced in a letter to colleagues that the Senate will vote on changing the rules to pass voting rights legislation if Republicans block a vote to open debate by Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Jan. 17. The threat to nuke the filibuster comes at the beginning of a critical midterm election year for the Democratic Party, where control of both houses of Congress is at stake.
The two laws in question are the Freedom to Vote Act backed by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., a conservative Democrat who was opposed to Democrats’ previous, but much more sweeping, voting rights legislation, H.R. 1, and, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. That bill restores major provisions in the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 subsequently weakened by Supreme Court rulings.
The Freedom to Vote Act knocks some of H.R. 1’s most expansive proposals out, such as no longer requiring states to use independent commissions for redistricting (despite including nonpartisan rules for redistricting), a narrower scope for the campaign finance overhaul proposals in H.R. 1, and provides more flexibility in the implementation of the bill’s provisions.
However, it would still dramatically expand voter access by mandating national vote-by-mail standards, mandating 15 days of early in-person voting in most populous jurisdictions, making Election Day a federal holiday, dramatically expanding the number of voter ID forms allowed, setting up automatic voter registration, and restoring voting rights to felons who have finished their sentences. Among the new vote-by-mail rules include requiring states to allow voters to request ballots online and allow administrators to distribute absentee ballot applications and postal service overhauls to speed up delivery of ballots.
There would also be new redistricting criteria set up to ensure legislative districts are fairly drawn, requires voting lines to be 30 minutes or less, increase penalties for voter intimidation and other forms of fraud, and overhaul the Federal Election Commission to avoid partisan gridlock.
Democrats see passing voting rights legislation as make-or-break to their prospects in the midterm elections this November. With dozens of Republican-led states enacting proposals to make voting more difficult and restrict access to absentee ballots after former President Donald Trump cried foul on them for ruining his electoral win in 2020, the burden of these voter restrictions falls the most on Democratic-leaning communities of color and low-income voters.
Unfortunately for Democrats, current Senate rules make it impossible to pass any bills without support from Republicans. This is because filibuster rules mean that aside from certain budget-related measures that can be passed via the budget reconciliation process with a simple majority (such as the Democrats’ COVID-19 stimulus bill passed early last year), all other bills essentially require 60 votes to pass the Senate. The Democrats currently have just 50 seats in the Senate — the slimmest majority possible — so 10 Republicans must support the Democrats’ bill for it to pass.
With President Biden’s Build Back Better $2.2 trillion agenda stalled in Congress after Manchin announced opposition to it in its current form, focus for the new year shifted toward voting rights.
In his letter to Senate Democrats Monday morning, Schumer announced that the Senate will “debate and consider changes to Senate rules on or before January 17, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, to protect the foundation of our democracy: free and fair elections,” if Republicans did not drop opposition to the two acts by then. “We hope our Republican colleagues change course and work with us,” Schumer wrote.
Schumer also spoke about the upcoming anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol last year, discussing how Senate Democrats will honor those officials who helped protect the Capitol Building “from those motivated by the Big Lie who tried to undo a fair and free election.”
“Make no mistake about it: this week Senate Democrats will make clear that what happened on January 6th and the one-sided, partisan actions being taken by Republican-led state legislatures across the country are directly linked, and we can and must take strong action to stop this anti-democratic march,” Schumer wrote.
He further described the attack as a “symptom of a broader illness — an effort to delegitimize our election process.”
Schumer’s call in the letter is the boldest yet the majority leader has come in calling on Democrats to modify filibuster rules to pass voting rights legislation.
Once endorsed only by progressives, centrist Democrats like Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and John Hickenlooper of Colorado have begun endorsing nuking the filibuster to pass election-related legislation.
However, two conservative Democrats — Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — have previously expressed reservation to modifying the Senate rules, though Manchin has signaled openness to modest reforms. Senate leadership aides say behind-the-scenes meetings continue with a number of Democrats over the Senate’s winter break and through this week who retain reservations over changing the Senate’s rules.
Republicans denounced Schumer’s letter. Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said of Schumer’s announcement to modify filibuster rules, an attempt “to nationalize elections,” and “[the Democrats] are so intent on getting their way that they will break the rules to get there.” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said that “an evenly divided Senate breaking and forever changing rules that require a supermajority is like a football team declaring its opponent’s endzone starts at the 40-yard line.”
But Schumer maintains that modifying filibuster rules is the only way to go. He said that “the weaponization of rules once meant to short-circuit obstruction have been hijacked to guarantee obstruction,” and though the Senate was designed to protect the rights of the minority, “those rights have been warped and contorted to obstruct and embarrass the will of majority.”
Possible changes to the Senate’s filibuster rules include bringing back the requirement that a senator continue talking to maintain a filibuster, repeatedly have the minority put up 41 votes to block bills, or make the filibuster not eligible to block putting up bills for debate on the floor.
Next week will be pivotal to Schumer’s MLK Day deadline. A snowstorm on Monday that brought 8 inches of snow to the Washington area brought delays to the chamber’s return on Monday and memorial services for former Sens. Johnny Isakson of Georgia and Harry Reid of Nevada, the powerful Democratic majority leader who passed the Affordable Care Act, are planned for this week.
“We must adapt. The Senate must evolve, like it has many times before. The Senate was design to evolve and has evolved many times in our history,” wrote Schumer in his letter. “Put more plainly by Senator [Robert] Byrd, ‘Congress is not obliged to be bound by the dead hand of the past.'”