Senate Republicans are on track to sink a voting rights bill that Democrats have made a signature priority, an outcome that will underscore the limits of the party’s power with the narrowest possible Senate majority, which has been further weakened by a member of their own caucus: Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
Democrats have set up a key test vote on the bill that they have pitched as a necessary counter to state-level efforts to restrict voting access, but Republicans have united against it. And with help from Manchin, they are poised to kill the bill even before gets the chance to be debated on its merits.
Failure of the bill to move forward would be a major blow for Democrats that will likely trigger a fresh outpouring of calls from progressives to eliminate the legislative filibuster, which requires most bills to get the votes of at least 10 Republicans given the current Senate makeup. But the votes are not there to eliminate the filibuster with Manchin and fellow Democrat Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona opposed.
The effort by Democrats to pass the voting legislation comes in the aftermath of former President Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and as Republican-controlled legislatures have pressed ahead with new state laws imposing limits on voting. The “big lie” led to the deadly insurrection on January 6. Also, Republican state legislators had introduced more than 380 bills with restrictive voting provisions, according to a tally from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
