Critics Blast Manchin Over Two Details That Decimate Why He Says He Opposes the ‘For the Individuals’ Voting Rights Invoice

US Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) works hard to make sure everyone knows that they are against the “For the People Act”, a comprehensive law that protects voters’ rights, makes voting easier and reduces the influence of dark money in political campaigns, limits partisan gerrymandering and installs ethical rules for elected officials. But two critical data points make his arguments useless.

“I believe the partisan electoral law will destroy the already weakening ties of our democracy, and for that reason I will be voting against the For the People Act,” Manchin said in a now infamous comment in a West Virginia newspaper.

He did not criticize the legislation itself, only that no Republican supports it. And that it’s 800 pages, if that’s a point of criticism at all.

That’s it.

But as Business Insider reports: “Joe Manchin helped fund the voting rights law in 2019, which he is now blocking on the grounds that the GOP does not like it.”

That’s a problem. Here’s the second, or, as MSNBC opinion columnist Hayes Brown writes, “the real kicker”:

“Unless the Senator’s office has private polls to share, Manchin’s assumptions about what West Virginia citizens want are wrong. According to a poll published last month – commissioned by End Citizens United and the Let America Vote Action Fund and conducted by Global Strategy Group and ALG Research – the For the People Act is hugely popular with likely voters in West Virginia. For example, ’76 percent of Republicans are in favor of ‘popularity, not to mention 79 percent of Independents and 81 percent of Democrats.

Here is Rachel Maddow of MSNBC Monday night explaining that second critical fact. She says the For the People Act “is more popular than the Infrastructure Act, it’s more popular than COVID aid”.

Rachel Maddow reveals that Joe Manchin contradicts the will of a majority of West Virginia Republican voters for the suffrage law and a majority of West Virginia voters for filibusters. pic.twitter.com/vnxhhu2Cpv

– Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) June 8, 2021

So why is Senator Manchin really against laws that he supported two years ago and that eight out of ten of his voters support?

Judd Legum, co-founder of ThinkProgress and founder of Popular Information, calls Manchin’s publicly cited reasons for defying the For the People Act “very strange.”

“Completely partisan, Republicans in the states are taking steps that Manchin himself recognizes as unnecessarily restricting elections. But Manchin says he will only agree to stop this partisan seizure of power if Republicans agree to join him. “

“This is exactly the same argument the Chamber used in talks it brought to the Senators in April against the legislation,” Legum writes, offering the Chamber of Commerce’s own words (in bold):

The Chamber believes that the ability of Americans to vote in accessible and safe elections and to have confidence in a free and fair outcome is fundamental to our nation. The Chamber is deeply concerned about efforts at the state and federal levels to implement electoral law changes in a biased manner. Changes made on a party basis are most likely to undermine access and security, and undermine public confidence and willingness of the American people to trust and accept future election results.