Senate GOP again blocks Democrats’ election bill
WASHINGTON – For the third time this year, Senate Democrats on Wednesday tried to pass sweeping elections legislation that they tout as a powerful counterweight to new voting restrictions in the states.
Once again, Republicans blocked them.
But amid the stalemate, there are signs that Democrats are making headway in their effort to create consensus around changing Senate procedural rules, a key step that could allow them to muscle transformative legislation through the narrowly divided chamber.
Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats, recently eased his longstanding opposition to changing the filibuster rules.
“I’ve concluded that democracy itself is more important than any Senate rule,” said King, who acknowledged that weakening the filibuster would likely prove to be a “double-edged sword” under a Republican majority.
Democrats still face long odds of passing their bill, now known as the Freedom to Vote Act, which Senate Minority Leader Mitch Mcconnell, R-KY., excoriated Wednesday as a federal “election takeover scheme.” But the softening of King’s stance on the filibuster amounts to progress, if incremental, for Senate Democrats as they look to convince others in their caucus to support a rule change.
“What we can’t accept is a situation where one side is calling for bipartisan debate and bipartisan cooperation while the other refuses to even engage in a dialogue,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, of New York, said from the chamber’s floor.
The Democrats’ voting bill was first introduced in March in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. It quickly passed the House at a time when Republicancontrolled legislatures – many inspired by former President Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen 2020 election – were advancing restrictions in the name of election security that will make it harder to vote and could make the administration of the elections more subject to partisan interference.