Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced on Monday that the Senate will hold another vote on voting rights legislation in January. If Republicans choose to filibuster debate on it for the fifth time, Schumer promised to hold a vote on changing Senate rules to enable it to come to the floor for debate and, ultimately, passage.
In a letter to his Senate colleagues, Schumer framed the push for voting rights laws as a response to the election fraud lies peddled by former President Donald Trump, which inspired the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Those lies and the insurrection have since stood as inspiration for Republican state legislatures to enact new laws that limit voting opportunities and, in at least one state, enable Republicans to purge Democrats from local election boards and replace them with partisans who can make it harder to vote in key Democratic counties.
“As we all are witnessing, the attacks on our democracy have not ceased,” Schumer wrote. “In fact, they have only accelerated. Much like the violent insurrectionists who stormed the US Capitol nearly one year ago, Republican officials in states across the country have seized on the former president’s Big Lie about widespread voter fraud to enact anti-democratic legislation and seize control of typically non-partisan election administration functions.”
The Jan. 6 anniversary is at the beginning of this final push for voting rights legislation. The Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday, which falls on Jan. 17 this year, is the end: Schumer promised that any push to change Senate rules will come by that date.
“The fight for the ballot is as old as the Republic,” Schumer wrote. “Over the coming weeks, the Senate will once again consider how to perfect this union and confront the historic challenges facing our democracy. We hope our Republican colleagues change course and work with us. But if they do not, 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.”
This final push for voting rights legislation comes after a long year of Republican filibusters preventing debate. Republicans blocked the For The People Act — a sweeping package of voting rights, redistricting, campaign finance and ethics reforms passed by the House — twice in the summer of 2021. They also blocked the Freedom to Vote Act, a compromise version of the For The People Act negotiated and written with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, a bill to restore sections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 gutted by recent Supreme Court rulings.
Manchin was the sole Democrat to ever state opposition to any voting rights bill, but he agreed to negotiate and wrote what became the Freedom To Vote Act. Throughout, Manchin insisted that his bill could obtain support from enough Republicans to overcome a filibuster. But Republicans remained almost entirely unified in their opposition and did not provide the 10 votes needed to overcome the 60-vote filibuster threshold. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) was the only Republican to vote to debate the John Lewis voting rights bill, although she voted to filibuster the Freedom To Vote Act.
The fate of the bills is still up in the air. Last year, Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) both expressed extreme hostility toward changing the Senate’s filibuster rules, which require 60 votes to begin and end debate on most legislation.
Sens. Angus King (I-Maine), Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) held conversations with centrists and conservatives within the Democratic caucus about changing the filibuster rules in recent months. While some, like Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), came out in support of rule changes for the first time, Manchin and Sinema remain the final obstacles.
In his Monday letter, Schumer declared the ongoing application of the 60 vote threshold to most bills a “warped and contorted” version of the legislative process that was “something our Founders explicitly opposed.”
“Put more plainly by Senator Byrd, 'Congress is not obliged to be bound by the dead hand of the past.'”
- Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer
“The constitution specified what measures demanded a supermajority — including impeachment or the ratification of treaties,” Schumer wrote. “But they explicitly rejected supermajority requirements for legislation, having learned firsthand of such a requirement’s defects under the Articles of Confederation. The weaponization of rules once meant to short-circuit obstruction have been hijacked to guarantee obstruction.”
He then picked up a line of argument supporting rule changes first used in 2021 by Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.).
“We must ask ourselves: if the right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy, then how can we in good conscience allow for a situation in which the Republican Party can debate and pass voter suppression laws at the State level with only a simple majority vote, but not allow the United States Senate to do the same?” Schumer wrote.
In finally calling for the Senate “to evolve,” Schumer quoted the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), an ardent defender of Senate rules whose seat Manchin holds and whom Manchin reveres.
“As former Senator Robert Byrd famously said, Senate Rules ‘must be changed to reflect changed circumstances,’” Schumer wrote. “Put more plainly by Senator Byrd, ‘Congress is not obliged to be bound by the dead hand of the past.’”