The Senate strangles an attempt to protect your right to vote

It was a bad day in America, no less so for the outcome having been expected. In votes that will live in disgrace, every Republican in the Senate opposed legislation to protect the right to vote and two Democrats joined them in refusing to allow it to pass by a simple majority. That is how history will recall Jan. 19, 2022.

Whether it will become a fateful date remains an open question. The answer depends in large part on whether voters continue to tolerate the fecklessness of senators like Rick Scott and Marco Rubio of Florida, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

Manchin and Sinema exalted the filibuster rule over an issue fundamental to our national character and to their party’s identity. If they go home to claim they supported voting rights, it will be a lie, because they did so only when it didn’t matter and not when it did.

There were 50 others who turned their backs on the most essential birthright of all Americans, the one freedom on which all others depend.

Now, nothing distinguishes one party from the other nearly as much as the Republicans’ contempt for the right to vote.

Of the many provisions in the defeated bill, the most important would have restored the heart of the Voting Rights Act that was inspired by the blood shed by civil rights marchers, including the late Rep. John Lewis at Selma, Ala.

The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 and renewed with critical support from the Republicans in Congress. But they have been silent since 2013, when the Supreme Court gutted it with a 5-4 decision overturning the key requirement: that jurisdictions with a history of discrimination obtain the approval of the Justice Department or a federal court before making changes to how or where people vote.

Less than two months later the North Carolina General Assembly exploited that opening with a law that targeted minority voters “with almost surgical precision,” according to the court that eventually overruled much of it.

On the same day that Scott, Rubio, Manchin, Sinema and 48 other senators strangled the bill to restore preclearance, an elections board in Lincoln County, Ga., only reluctantly postponed plans to replace the county’s seven voting precincts with a single polling place 17 miles or more from where many voters live. Nearly 29% of the population is Black. There is no public transportation. It is one of six counties where Republican commissions took advantage of a new Georgia law to politicize their election boards.

On the same day, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell remarked “… if you look at the statistics, African-American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans.”

A simple slip of the tongue? Or did it reveal a deep-seated disdain for Black voters?

There was the usual double-talk from McConnell about how the filibuster rule, which requires 60 votes to consider a bill, is essential to “forging compromise, cooling passions and ensuring that new laws earn broad support from a cross-section of our country.”

“Broad support,” Sen. McConnell?

Polls find 60% or more voters agree with the main elements and principles of the defeated legislation. Democratic senators represent some 41 million more voters than Republicans do, according to a calculation by Vox. The New York Intelligencer found Republicans in the Senate haven’t represented a majority of Americans since 1996.

“Compromise?” New Hampshire’s Republican governor, Chris Sununu, disposed of that excuse last week when he said he would not run for the Senate. Republican senators, he said, had made it plain to him that “they were all, for the most part, content with the speed at which they weren’t doing anything.”

“That’s not what I do,” he added.

The legislation that failed Wednesday would also have made Election Day a national holiday and set nationwide standards for ballot access, including a minimum of 15 consecutive days of early voting, entitlement of all voters to request mail ballots, and automatic voter registration. Nineteen states, including Florida, have enacted a total of 34 laws making it harder to vote or have the votes counted fairly than when Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump for the presidency.

Of course, McConnell eagerly suspended the filibuster to pack the Supreme Court with Trump’s right-wing nominees, taking advantage of a precedent Democrats had set to confirm lower court and Cabinet nominees.

In doing that, McConnell gave the lie to everything he and Manchin said Wednesday about the importance of a rule found nowhere in the Constitution.

“The Frozen Republic” was the title of a 1996 book that blamed the Constitution, with its grant of excessive power to small states, for “paralyzing democracy.” The author’s solution was to adopt a new constitution, which of course would be far more improbable today than when it was created in 1787.

We don’t need something so radical to unfreeze the republic. We can do it ourselves simply by choosing senators who will do what Rubio and Scott would not about a Senate rule that perpetuates the tyranny of a power-grabbing minority.

Rubio’s term is up this year. It’s not too soon to mark Nov. 8 on your calendar.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.