Mitch McConnell Is Personally Going to Bat for Voter Suppression
Voting Rights
Mitch McConnell Is Personally Going to Bat for Voter Suppression
The Senate minority leader doesn’t see why Democrats are so worked up about Republicans’ efforts to roll back voting rights—and plans to stonewall the For the People Act as it advances this week.
By Eric Lutz
May 11, 2021
It may be Democrats’ best chance to beat back GOP attacks on voting rights—and it’s already in danger. Sure, the For the People Act is a lock to move forward out of the Senate Rules Committee, which began marking up the sweeping election law on Tuesday. But from there, it will go to a full chamber where Republicans, who stand to benefit from the very disenfranchisement the bill seeks to combat, are unlikely to give it the 10 votes it needs to pass—and where Democrats, some of whom are divided over language and procedure, may not be able to overcome the stonewalling.
Republicans are digging in their heels against the House-passed legislation, which would expand access to the ballot, strengthen government ethics rules, and dismantle the laws that states like Georgia and Florida have enacted based on Donald Trump’s election lies. Painting SB1 as a “politically motivated federal takeover of the election system that would make elections more chaotic and less secure,” as a memo obtained by Politico put it, the GOP is set to go on the offensive against the measure, with Mitch McConnell leading the charge. “It’s a horrible bill,” the Senate minority leader said in a radio interview over the weekend. “I’m going to do everything I can and my colleagues are going to do everything we can to prevent it.”
McConnell upped the ante on Tuesday, saying in a fiery statement, “Our democracy is not in crisis, and we’re not going to let one party take over our democracy under the false pretense of saving it. The Democratic Party wants to rewrite the ground rules of American politics for partisan benefit.”
They may not have to do much. Without 10 GOP votes, the bill won’t have enough support to break through the filibuster. And even if Democrats were all united behind the legislation, Senator Joe Manchin has made plain he views killing the obstruction tactic as a nonstarter. “There is no circumstance in which I will vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster,” he wrote in April. (Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona also opposes getting rid of the filibuster.)
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https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/05/mitch-mcconnell-personally-going-to-bat-for-voter-suppression-for-the-people-act
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