WASHINGTON (AP) – Democratic Senator Joe Manchin was not swayed Tuesday by civil rights leaders pleading with him to reconsider his opposition to a sweeping electoral law that House spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi said was critical to a ” republican attack on our democracy ”.
Manchin, from deeply republican West Virginia, told reporters in a meeting he described as “excellent”, “I don’t think anyone has changed their position.” One participant said Manchin was “pretty well buried”.
Known as HR1, the bill is a top priority for Democrats and is viewed by many in the party as an antidote to a wave of Republican-backed laws being passed at the state level that restrict people’s choice. It touches on almost every aspect of the vote and has already been passed by Parliament.
But Manchin threw a wrench at the factory on Sunday when he said he would oppose the law. That effectively condemns the move in a tightly divided Senate, where it is universally opposed by Republicans.
His decision also prompted constituencies and members of his own party to wrestle options, raising the prospect that no voting bill would pass Congress to tackle what is expertly considered to be the largest assault on voting rights in generations.
Manchins have said that “inaction is not an option” when it comes to voting rights. But he has angered other Democrats and constituencies as well, insisting that his support for any piece of legislation depends on some Republicans voting in favor of it too. He also opposes the removal of the 60-vote requirement to break a filibuster, a move that would allow Democrats to pass the law without Republican votes.
“We could get to a point where the dialogue is deadlocked,” Rev. Marc Morial, who attended the meeting with Manchin on Tuesday, told CNN. “And Joe Manchin was buried pretty well.”
Manchin’s comments came after Pelosi told House Democrats there was no substitute for the law.
“I hope that the passage of (the bill) leaves a legacy for all of us who want to strengthen our democracy,” the California Democrat wrote in a letter to his colleagues.
Now Democrats and constituencies are reaching for an alternative.
Some said they would follow Manchin’s suggestions and advocate a narrower law called HR4, which updates the Suffrage Act to reintroduce the requirement that new electoral laws and legislatures in certain states be subject to federal approval.
Others said they wanted to increase the pressure on Manchin. Still others insisted the Democrats have to bring HR1 to the Senate this month, though it is sure to fail, to draw attention to the Republican opposition and the Manchins.
“It’s going to be chaotic,” said Fred Wertheimer, president of the good government organization Democracy 21, who helped draft HR1 in 2017. “What Manchin said is not the last word for us.
“I don’t think he’s ready to go down in history as a senator who denied voting rights to millions of eligible voters, especially colored people.”
Rev. William Barber II, a major liberal activist who leads the Campaign of the Poor, represented the breadth of liberal anger against Manchin, tweeting on Monday that his group would lead a march in West Virginia to “challenge Manchin.”
Manchin stated his opposition in West Virginia’s Charleston Gazette-Mail on Sunday. “Partial voting and electoral reform will practically ensure that the partisan divisions deepen,” he wrote.
Only one Republican Senator, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, has signed Manchin’s favorite Voting Rights Act update, an indication of how politics on the matter has changed since the Senate’s unanimous renewal of the Voting Rights Act in 2006. And the new aggressive constellation of conservative groups of voters who mobilized against HR 1 say that they will now also campaign against HR4 to keep the GOP united.
“The bottom line of HR4 is the same – it’s a federal takeover of the electoral system,” said Jessica Anderson, executive director of conservative political organization Heritage Action for America, in an interview. “As long as you have a consensus on the right and stand together in lockstep, you will not have a bipartisan break.”
After former President Donald Trump’s lies about how he lost the 2020 election to widespread fraud, voting has become a polarized party issue, much like abortion or taxes. That has almost guaranteed inaction in Congress, where the filibuster allows a unified minority party to block most major legislative initiatives.
“I think Congress is likely to do nothing,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California-Irvine who specializes in suffrage.
If there is a bill that could get support from the GOP, it would be HR4, argued Hasen, noting that the Republican Party once supported the voting rights bill. That was before a 2013 Supreme Court ruling by a Conservative majority in the court laid down the manner in which the law was used to require 13 states to “pre-check” changes to voting laws with the Justice Department. The new bill, named after the late Democratic MP John Lewis, would restore these pre-approval requirements.
In contrast, Hasen said, HR1 was a “democratic wish list” that contained provisions that would castrate voter identification laws and implement federal election funding that would never be supported by the GOP. “It was kind of a cheap signal device for the Democrats,” said Hasen.
However, HR1 supporters insist that the bill remains the antidote to the recent wave of Republican laws that restrict access to postal voting, shorten early polling times, and make it easier for partisan election observers to challenge voters’ qualifications.
Wendy Weiser of the Brennan Center for Justice, a political group that advocates access to voting rights and supports HR1, noted that the update to the voting rights law would only address future laws, not those passed this year.
It would only allow the federal government to speak out to protect the rights of racial minorities rather than addressing other forms of discrimination, like a new law in Montana that removes student IDs as a legal form of voting identification. And it is silent on provisions like drawing legislative districts for the benefit of the party, which is prohibited in HR1.
“These provisions in HR1 still have to be adopted somehow, otherwise we will not be able to contain this really frightening attack on our democratic institutions,” said Weiser.
Activists and lawmakers emphasized that the voting rights update HR4 was also of crucial importance. It was delayed because it had to go through a complicated process to comply with the 2013 Supreme Court ruling. In the end, they say the fate of an election overhaul will be clearer once Manchin tries to round up the 10 Republicans needed to break a filibuster.
At this point, they hope the West Virginia Democrats will face the realities of partisan electoral politics.
“They show no willingness to stand up and do the right thing, so the idea that 10 of them could be made to come along is a stretch,” said Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md., A primary sponsor of HR1. “Without filibuster reform, you will not achieve real change.”
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Riccardi reported from Denver.
Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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