‘Jim Crow relic’: Senate filibuster stands in way of Democratic voting rights push

As states around the country advance a wave of measures that would make it harder to vote, Democrats in Washington are planning the most sweeping voting rights protections in decades. But to pass those protections, Democrats will have to overcome a huge barrier.

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Shortly after taking control of the US Senate last month, Democrats made it clear that they wanted to move quickly to advance a version of the massive voting rights bill that passed the US House last year. The measure would require every state to offer automatic, same-day and online voter registration. It would require states to let anyone vote by mail if they wish and implement new guidelines to prevent states from being overly aggressive in how they purge their vote rolls. It would also strip state lawmakers of their power to redraw congressional districts every 10 years, curbing their ability to draw lines that virtually guarantee re-election.

Democrats are also considering separate legislation to restore a key provision in the 1965 Voting Rights Act that would require states with a history of discriminating against voters to get any voting changes approved by the federal government before they go into effect.

Though they control both chambers of Congress and the White House, Democrats won’t be able to pass either measure unless they get rid of the filibuster, a procedural maneuver the minority party in the Senate can use to block legislation that doesn’t have the support of 60 senators.

Democrats are divided on whether to get rid of the filibuster, and it’s unclear whether they will ultimately do so. Those who favor scrapping the procedure argue that it is impeding a once-in-a-generation opportunity to protect the right to vote. Not doing so, they say, would amount to giving Republicans a free pass to continue a brazen effort to restrict voting rights and entrench their power amid a shifting electorate that appears less likely to favor the GOP.

The filibuster should not block Democrats from passing a major voting rights bill and a new voting rights act, Eric Holder, who served as US attorney general from 2009 to 2015, said in a statement to the Guardian. Both measures, he added, were “badly needed corrections and reforms that will strengthen our democracy”.

“The reality is that too many in the Republican party have grown comfortable manipulating our political system for partisan advantage,” added Holder, who is leading the Democratic effort to combat excessive partisan gerrymandering. “The Senate should not allow the filibuster, which was once used to stop civil rights legislation, to now stop critical bills that would protect and strengthen our democratic system.”

Stacey Abrams, the former former Georgia gubernatorial candidate who helped flip her state blue in 2020, also urged Democrats in Washington to go full throttle to protect voting rights.

“Democrats in Congress must fully embrace their mandate to fast-track democracy reforms that give voters a fair fight, rather than allowing undemocratic systems to be used as tools and excuses to perpetuate that same system,” she wrote in a Washington Post op-ed in which she endorsed getting rid of the filibuster.

“This is a moment of both historic imperative and, with unified Democratic control of the White House and Congress, historic opportunity.”

The last few weeks have crystallized the need for those protections as states that saw record turnout have taken up bills that would make it harder to vote. In Georgia, where Democrats won for the first time in decades amid record turnout, Republicans are weighing measures to require voters to submit ID during the mail-in ballot process and to get rid of no-excuse absentee voting. Republicans in Arizona, another state Democrats flipped in 2020, are considering legislation to make it easier to remove voters from a permanent vote-by-mail list and to require mail-in ballots be notarized.

Across the country, at least 165 bills in 33 states would make it harder to vote, according to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice.

Danielle Lang, a voting rights attorney at the Campaign Legal Center, noted that lawmakers who campaigned on strengthening America’s voting laws now had an obligation to see it through.

“Failure to act is not an option,” she wrote in an email. “While we averted democracy disaster in 2020 – due to the sheer willpower of election officials, organizers, and voters nationwide – it would be folly to ignore the warning sirens it set off.”

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The filibuster has a long history of impeding civil rights legislation in America and has been deployed to try to block civil rights protections, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act. When Barack Obama spoke at the funeral for John Lewis, the civil rights icon who died last year, he called the filibuster a “Jim Crow relic” that should be eliminated to pass sweeping voting rights legislation.

The filibuster also essentially allows a small minority of senators to exercise outsize influence over legislation, thwarting the will of the majority. “It’s supremely ironic that something that gives rural, sparsely populated states so much power already would further kind of entrench minority rule and further make it difficult to access the ballot box,” said Stephen Spaulding, senior counsel for public policy and government affairs at Common Cause, a government watchdog group.

Keeping the filibuster in place and not passing sweeping voting reforms would have “profound downstream effects”, Spaulding added.

“The American people chose new leaders; they want a responsive government,” he said. “To have essentially a minority of senators exercising veto power over the entire legislative process is just not gonna be tenable.”