Filibuster a tool to restrict number of voters

In his recent Marin Voice commentary, Tom Montgomery celebrated the filibuster as how a minority defends itself against the depredations of a majority (“Filibuster is an important tool for minority voices in the Senate,” April 2).

He has a short memory.

Only a couple of years ago, Sen. Mitch McConnell made it impossible for a Democratic minority to filibuster the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Of course, he also forgot that, for generations, Southern Democrats, whose platforms are now considered to be Republican, filibustered any attempt to interfere with Jim Crow or allow Blacks to vote.

His knowledge of history is also lacking. He attempts to show the superiority of the Roman republic over the Greek “democracies.” The Greek city states were democracies only in the sense that there was democratic voting among elites who ruled over large numbers of slaves, who could not vote at all. Besides that, Rome did not defeat those pseudo democracies since Alexander already had. They defeated the Macedonian kings who were the heirs of Alexander.

Our Declaration of Independence declares that “governments ... secure their just powers from the consent of the governed.” It is the party he represents, the Republicans, who are doing their best to prevent as many of the governed as possible, from voting. The filibuster is one tool in the party’s arsenal.

— Chet Seligman, Point Reyes Station