WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Senate failed to pass federal voting-rights legislation Wednesday night as Democrats Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) and Joe Manchin (WV) sided with Republicans to keep a filibuster intact and kill the bill.
Legislation called the John R. Lewis Act – a bill already passed in the U.S. House that would set federal guidelines for voting rights and elections – failed to pass Wednesday in the Senate. Due to a Senate rule called the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to stop debate on a bill before it can be voted on and decided upon by merely a simple majority, the bill failed, 51-49. Republicans filibustered the bill and Democrats failed to throw out the rule. Senators Sinema and Manchin sided with all Republican senators to keep the filibuster in place. Notably, both parties have invoked this “nuclear option” of killing a filibuster in the past on other bills. Sinema and Manchin believe the filibuster prevents “radical” shifts in policy in the Congress.
After the John R. Lewis Act was defeated, GOP Senator Mitch McConnell blew off concerns about future elections being rigged and voters turned away, saying, “The concern is misplaced, because if you look at the statistics, African-American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as American voters.”
Democrats were outraged at Sinema and Manchin, but they had already signaled their support of the filibuster before the bill was brought to the Senate floor.
Find one single American, that hadn’t lost their right to vote, that couldn’t vote. I’ll wait. Meanwhile, the racist theory, the democrats have, is that people of color are to stupid to figure out how to get a state issued ID. Record number of black and Latino voters in the last election. Voter suppression does not exist.
VOTER IDENTIFICATION IS NOT RACIST !!
You Marxist idiots !
You want to undo decades if not centuries of precedent in how votes are cast in USA because Orange Marmalade lost… bitter much?
So you are against voter identification and still lost your run at city council
Looks like the Dems will still have to cheat elections the old fashioned way.
Kool Aid Drinker
Yeah, Kool Aid Drinker, you know the Democrats wouldn’t cheat, that’s why they fight having the names of the deceased scrubbed from voting lists. Got to keep it honest.