Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell on Monday night blocked an attempt by Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to set up simple majority votes on a sweeping elections bill and legislation to bolster the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Schumer (D-NY) took on the Senate floor to detail his offer: allowing the two bills to need only a simple majority to pass instead of needing the normal 60 votes to advance in the Senate. In exchange, Democrats would sign off on holding simple majority votes on nearly 20 bills that Republicans placed on the Senate calendar.
“We Democrats aren’t afraid of these votes. So what I proposed to the Republican leader is that the Senate hold up-or-down votes at a majority threshold on each of the Republicans bills he has outlined tonight as well as the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act,” Schumer said from the Senate floor, according to The Hill.
McConnell, however, rejected Schumer’s offer without elaborating on his objection. Under the Senate’s rules, any one senator can try to set up a vote or pass a bill, but because it requires signoff from the full Senate, any one senator can also object and block the request.
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As noted by The Washington Post, however, “the GOP’s increasingly blunt argument is that it needs voting restrictions to win.”
So it was not surprising to hear party leaders say that they would block any attempt by Democrats to make it easy to vote because “Republicans would never win an election again.”
