Would a coup get Sinema’s attention?

I’m not sure how much more proof Sen. Kyrsten Sinema needs.

Late last week, Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, turned over to House investigators looking into the Jan. 6 insurrection a 30-plus page PowerPoint presentation designed, essentially, to overturn the 2020 election.

In other words, to stage a coup. Then, the retired U.S. army colonel who was part of the team who created the plan told The Washington Post that he had spoken to Meadows “maybe eight to 10 times” the night before the U.S. Capitol was attacked.

Think of that.

Republicans at the highest level of the government were in possession of a blueprint to overthrow the government.

How much more proof does Sinema need of the GOP’s concerted effort to, one way or another, rig the election process or completely circumvent it in order to seize and maintain power?

Look at what GOP politicians are doing at the state level.

In Georgia, Republican gubernatorial candidate David Perdue says he would not have signed the certification of the state’s 2020 election results if he had been governor at the time. Even though no fraud had been found and even though Georgia law doesn’t allow the governor to not certify an election.

Does Sinema not believe such behavior will follow with other Republicans? Has she not seen who’s running in Arizona?

Voter suppression laws have been introduced in GOP-controlled legislatures like ours all over the country. Obstacles to voting. Restrictions on mailin ballots. Impediments for minority and rural voters.

There is federal legislation aimed at leveling the playing field nationwide. But, in order to pass it, the Senate must abolish its filibuster rule, which requires a 60-vote supermajority before any bill can advance. It’s not in the Constitution. It’s something very few states do. Arizona does not.

Sinema continues to support the rule, however.

She told The Washington Post, “My opinion is that legislation that is crafted together, in a bipartisan way, is the legislation that’s most likely to pass and stand the test of time. And I would certainly encourage my colleagues to use that effort to move forward.”

Except, they aren’t moving forward. Just the opposite. Her colleagues are supporting legislation that sends voting rights back to Jim Crow days.

I thought she might be convinced of that in November when Republicans in the Senate blocked the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would have restored some of the voting protections some states have

taken away.

Then again, I thought she might have been convinced back in June, when Republicans in the Senate blocked the For the People Act, which meant to do things like improve voter registration, expand early voting, require more transparency in political donations and more.

But that didn’t sway her, either. Now students at Arizona State University are on a hunger strike, trying to get Sinema to help pass the Freedom to Vote Act, the latest attempt to create national standards that would protect voter rights, diminish the ability of those wanting to overturn elections, end partisan redistricting and reform the campaign finance system. These are all things that Americans on both sides of the aisle agree with.

But not the Republicans in the Senate.

One of those who helped Sinema get elected to the Senate was Grant Woods, the former Arizona attorney general who remained active in causes of civil rights and had morphed into the same kind of Arizona icon as his friend and former boss, John McCain.

Woods passed away suddenly last month and at the memorial service for him, his wife, Marlene Galan Woods, spoke of how her husband’s last great fight was trying to stop voter suppression, which she called “a cancer that is spreading in legislatures around our country.”

Woods held out hope that Sinema would change her position on the filibuster in order to stop it. He hoped that she and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, another filibuster holdout, would recognize there is only one way left to prevent voter suppression.

He told an interviewer, “Sen. Sinema should know that, so should Sen. Manchin. At the end of the day, I’m very hopeful that they’ll come around and do the right thing. But if they don’t, then I don’t think they belong in the Senate anymore.”

Compromise is only possible if both sides are willing to participate.

If Democrats like Sinema don’t act to protect voting rights while they have a chance there will be no need for any future compromise. We’ll be living in a one-party autocracy.