House challenges Senate, approves voting rights bill
WASHINGTON — The House passed a repackaged set of voting rights bills Thursday, pushing past Republican opposition and hurriedly sending the legislation to the Senate to force a showdown over the fate of the measures and the reach of the filibuster.
Acting as part of a Democratic plan to expedite consideration of the bills in the Senate, the House approved the new measure on a partyline vote of 220-203 after a heated partisan debate in which lawmakers clashed over the state of election laws across the country.
The new legislation combined two separate bills already passed by the House — the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act — and joined them in what had been an unrelated measure covering NASA. The move will allow the Senate to bring the bill directly to the floor, skirting an initial filibuster, although Republicans could still block it from coming to a final vote.
Democrats said the legislation was urgently needed to offset efforts taking hold in Republican-led states to make it more difficult to vote after Democratic gains in the 2020 elections and former President Donald Trump’s false claim that the vote was stolen. “There are people who don’t want you to vote and they are using every tool in the toolbox to make it harder,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schutz, D-Fla., referring to the enactment over the past year of new voting restrictions in Republican-led states.
Republicans railed against the maneuver used to pass the bill Thursday, accusing Democrats of “hijacking” the space agency measure to push through legislation that they said represented federal intrusion into state voting operations to give an unfair advantage to Democratic candidates.
“This is one giant leap backward for American election integrity,” said Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Wis.