Schumer delays Senate voting rights votes as filibuster fight looms

On Jan 14, 2022

Democratic supporters of U.S. President Joe Biden hold letter-signs reading all together ‘Senate, Act Now’ during a candlelight vigil on the National Mall in observance of the first anniversary of the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump.

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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer delayed votes on a pair of voting rights bills, pushing back a debate over the chamber’s rules that will decide the fate of election reforms the Democratic Party sees as vital to protecting U.S. democracy.

The New York Democrat said late Thursday that the chamber would not take up the legislation until Tuesday, citing “the circumstances regarding Covid and another potentially hazardous winter storm” approaching Washington, D.C. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, announced a positive Covid-19 test on Thursday. Democrats will lack a simple majority until he can return to the evenly split Senate.

“Make no mistake, the United States Senate will — for the first time this Congress — debate voting rights legislation beginning on Tuesday,” Schumer said Thursday night. “Members of this chamber were elected to debate and to vote, particularly on an issue as vital to the beating heart of our democracy as this one. And we will proceed.”

Republicans plan to block two proposals, known as the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Once the bills fail, Democrats plan to consider ways to bypass the filibuster and push the proposals through with a simple majority.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., Sens. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., left, and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., conduct a news conference after a Senate Democrats luncheon the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, January 4, 2022.

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The strategy appears doomed. While all Senate Democrats have signed on to the elections legislation, at least two — Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — have said they will not back the filibuster changes needed to pass it. Under current rules, Democrats need at least 10 Republicans to pass most legislation.

“Eliminating the 60-vote threshold on a party line with the thinnest of possible majorities to pass these bills that I support will not guarantee that we prevent demagogues from winning office,” Sinema said Thursday as she reiterated her stance.

If the two centrist senators hold firm on rules changes, it appears all but impossible for Democrats to pass a series of reforms they see as critical to protecting ballot access. Provisions in the bills would expand early and mail-in voting, make automatic voter registration the national standard, enshrine Election Day as a national holiday and restore parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 gutted by the Supreme Court.

It is unclear now how Democrats will proceed if they fail to scrap the filibuster. Some Republicans have sounded open to reforming the Electoral Count Act of 1887 to make it…