On voting rights, Democratic senators need to face reality

WASHINGTON » The holiday season has just begun, and I already know what I want for Christmas: full and fair voting rights for all Americans. Note that I didn’t say please. This is a demand, not a request.

I’m talking to you, Sens. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz. I’m talking to other Democratic senators who might also value the filibuster over voting rights but haven’t been so public about it. And I’m talking to the brick wall of Republicans in the Senate and the House who once routinely supported guaranteeing the right to vote but who now fear and loathe the basic mechanism of our democracy.

The last time the landmark Voting Rights Act was reauthorized, in 2006, it was approved by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in the House and unanimously in the Senate, with unctuous hosannas from Republicans. But this month, only one Republican — Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) — voted to even allow the Senate to debate the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement

Act, which would restore and update the “pre-clearance” requirements of the 1965 law that were voided by the Supreme Court in 2013.

Those provisions required states with a history of electoral discrimination against African Americans and other minorities to obtain approval from the Justice Department before changing laws about voting. Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. wrote for the 5-4 majority that “history did not end in 1965,” indicating he believed the kind of discrimination we suffered back then no longer exists.

Boy, was he wrong. Republicans have practically fallen over themselves in a rush to enact laws that limit or dilute the voting power of Americans of color — who, not coincidentally, tend to vote for Democrats. They limit the number of polling places in selected neighborhoods so that voters of color have to wait in long lines. They try to structure rules on early and absentee voting in ways that disadvantage minorities. They draw congressional district boundaries to dilute the Black and Hispanic vote — and do the same with state legislative districts so that Republicans can continue to be the ones who make, and distort, election rules.

This year, with GOP voters bewitched by the “big lie” about purported voter fraud, some Republican-held states are going even further to seek control over how votes are counted. Georgia, for example, has given its GOP-controlled state legislature a role in deciding who won an election and who lost. In January, the state elected two Democrats to the U.S. Senate, and Republicans seem determined not to let anything like that happen again.

All attempts by Congress to guarantee that all qualified citizens in every state have the right and ability to vote have been stymied by the Senate filibuster. The John Lewis Act is no radical departure; essentially, it would just return us to the status quo before 2013. If there are not the necessary 10 Republican votes to do even that, the prospects for stronger and more comprehensive prodemocracy legislation are nonexistent.

The right to vote should not be a partisan issue. But it is.

The Republican senators who voted in the past for the provisions of the John Lewis Act should vote for them again now. But they won’t.

It is past time for Senate Democrats to deal with reality as it is, not as they wish it to be. The Senate is not the comity club it used to be. It has become basically a smaller, less efficient version of the House, where members vote along party lines rather than being guided by conscience. Democrats need to recognize that preserving our democracy is much more important than Senate tradition, and at a minimum they need to change the rules so that the John Lewis Act can be passed by simple majority.

The argument against eliminating the filibuster — even for the one fundamental issue of voting rights — is that Democrats will regret such a move when Republicans are back in charge of the chamber. Imagine what they would do if Democrats have no power to use the filibuster to stop them.

My response: But look at what Republicans are doing right now. This very minute. As we speak.

Manchin and Sinema have said they are unwilling to eliminate or circumvent the filibuster. But they have also said they understand the importance of guaranteeing voting rights, and surely they see what Republicans are doing to unfairly tilt the political playing field in the GOP’s favor.

This isn’t about saving the Democratic Party. It’s about giving all Americans a vote, and thus a voice, in electing our leaders. Senators, do the right thing.