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.”
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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”). 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.īut 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.
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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. That doesn’t mean that the 50 Republicans who blocked the bill should evade scrutiny. 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. 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. 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. Democrats should have focused on a narrower fix to the Electoral Count Act. Democrats were too ambitious in their proposal. Biden should have pushed harder on voting rights sooner. 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. Yes, the defeat comes at a uniquely dangerous moment for democracy. Yes, it’s astonishing to see two moderate Democrats block the bill because of their unflinching support for an arcane Senate rule. 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, 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, the defeat is a major blow to Joe Biden, who spent significant political capital over the last few weeks, pushing the bill. Get the latest updates on voting rights in the Guardian’s Fight to vote newsletter