Eli Zupnick of Fix Our Senate: “[T]here’s a lot of energy behind the idea that something needs to happen on voting rights, that it would be catastrophic for Democrats to close out the year without doing something to protect the right to vote in 2022 to prevent partisan gerrymandering that would break the House for a decade.”
WASHINGTON, DC — A Grace Segers article in The New Republic, “Chuck Schumer’s Daunting Quest to ‘Restore the Senate’” highlights the growing consensus within the Senate Democratic caucus on the need to reform the filibuster to pass voting rights and democracy legislation.
The piece quotes from Eli Zupnick, spokesperson from Fix Our Senate, helping underscore the momentum within the Senate and the stakes facing Democrats, including:
“What we’re hearing from allies in the Senate is very encouraging, that there’s a lot of energy behind the idea that something needs to happen on voting rights, that it would be catastrophic for Democrats to close out the year without doing something to protect the right to vote in 2022 to prevent partisan gerrymandering that would break the House for a decade.”
The full story is available online here at The New Republic and is excerpted below:
“...In his November letter to Democratic colleagues outlining the hefty end-of-year to-do list for the Senate, Schumer said that the fight to pass voting rights legislation remained one of his top priorities. Republicans have blocked several bills related to voting and elections brought by Democrats this year, a feat made possible by their persistent use of the filibuster.
… The filibuster is the elephant in the Senate chamber that’s gone unmentioned in all this talk of restoration … In theory, legislation should be able to be approved with an up-or-down simple majority vote. But that requires clearing the hurdle of limiting debate, and reaching the 60-vote threshold.
…The Senate is not an antique desk, and “restoration” will entail more than just a little varnish. Senator Angus King on Tuesday outlined some options for filibuster reform for The New Republic, such as requiring senators to be present and talking on the Senate floor if they want to block a bill, or to require the minority to muster 41 votes to block a bill instead of putting the onus on the majority to garner 60 votes to advance it. “Right now, the filibuster is too easy. We ought to have a new word for it. It shouldn’t be the ‘filibuster,’ because it’s not what it was 50 years ago. It’s a de facto supermajority requirement, which the framers expressly rejected,” King said. (Of course, in this prior era, the filibuster was often employed by segregationists who would hold the floor for hours in attempts to block civil rights legislation, so discussions of “restoring the Senate” refer more to how the filibuster was used than what it was used for.)
Eli Zupnick, the spokesperson for the Fix Our Senate coalition, told The New Republic that while eliminating the filibuster altogether was their first choice, reform is an important first step. “The bottom line is that there are bills that need to pass. Most critically right now is the voting rights and anti-partisan gerrymandering legislation, the Freedom to Vote Act. And whenever it moves us in that direction, and takes steps to fix the broken Senate, is a good thing,” Zupnick said. (The Freedom to Vote Act would, among other things, ban partisan gerrymandering, but states are already beginning to unveil their new congressional district maps, and so any reform legislation may already be coming too late.)
Several Democratic senators have held regular meetings with Schumer to discuss the next steps for action on voting rights, including a Wednesday confab in the majority leader’s office. Schumer pledged on Wednesday morning: “We’re going to get to voting rights this year.”
…Senator Tim Kaine told The New Republic on Wednesday that the focus of the meetings was on figuring out how to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, knowing that these bills will not get sufficient Republican support. “We have to unify around a proposal that we can all agree to, but I think we’re making good progress on that,” Kaine said. When asked if Manchin was party to these conversations, Kaine said that all 50 Democrats were involved in the discussions on the next steps for voting rights legislation. “We all have thoughts about what are rules reforms that we think will be good for the operation of the Senate. And you have to kind of one-on-one talk to people about that,” Kaine said. “You have to look at reforms you think would work, whether we’re in the majority or the minority, they have to be fair to all sides.”
Although Democrats have not yet agreed to a rules change that would be agreeable to all, Zupnick expressed confidence that something could be accomplished before the end of the year. “What we’re hearing from allies in the Senate is very encouraging, that there’s a lot of energy behind the idea that something needs to happen on voting rights, that it would be catastrophic for Democrats to close out the year without doing something to protect the right to vote in 2022 to prevent partisan gerrymandering that would break the House for a decade,” Zupnick said.”