Joe Manchin’s hard no on voting bill leaves Democrats seeking new path

For months, Democrats in the US Senate have danced delicately around Joe Manchin, giving him space and holding out hope that the West Virginia Democrat would eventually come around and give his must-win vote to legislation that would amount to the most sweeping voting rights protections in a generation.

That detente effectively ended on Sunday, when Manchin authored an op-ed making it clear he will not vote for the bill, leaving Democrats to find a new path forward – that is, if there is one at all.

Manchin did not raise substantive concerns about the legislation, the For the People Act, in the Senate but rather said that he would only support it if it was bipartisan. He also reiterated his resistance to eliminating the filibuster, a legislative rule that requires 60 votes to move most legislation forward in the Senate. Getting 10 Republicans to sign on to voting rights legislation is a fool’s errand, many observers say, pointing to how the party has embraced Trump’s baseless lies about the election and is actively trying to make it harder to vote.

“Republican intransigence on voting rights is not an excuse for inaction and Senator Manchin must wake up to this fact,” said Karen Hobart Flynn, the president of Common Cause, a government watchdog group, which backs the bill.

Manchin’s recalcitrance comes at a moment when there is urgent concern about the health of America’s democracy. Republicans have introduced hundreds of bills across the country to restrict access to the ballot, including sweeping measures in Florida and Georgia and Texas. There is also growing worry about Republican attempts to take over the machinery of elections, including offices that could allow them to block winning candidates from being rightfully seated in office.

Mondaire Jones, a freshman progressive congressman from New York, harshly criticized Manchin for not doing enough to protect voting rights when it was clear they were under attack. “Manchin’s op-ed might as well be titled, ‘Why I’ll vote to preserve Jim Crow,’” he tweeted.

Manchin’s comments came just days after Joe Biden made a renewed effort to push for the voting protections, saying he would “fight like heck” for them and putting Vice-President Kamala Harris in charge of the White House’s efforts. Manchin’s colleagues in the Senate made it clear that they were disappointed with his op-ed, but left the door open to crafting a pared-down bill that might be acceptable to Manchin (and thus some Republicans). “The fight is not over,” Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, said in a statement.

“I wish with all my heart that this bill weren’t necessary, or that Republicans in the Senate would join us in defending Americans’ right to vote,” Jeff Merkley, a Democratic senator from Oregon, said in a statement. “As I have told all my colleagues many times, I am open to any conversation about the provisions of this bill, and will not give up on American democracy.”

Manchin has offered some hints at what an acceptable bill could look like. In March, he embraced provisions in the For the People Act that would require at least 15 days of early voting and protect Native American voting rights. He also backed certain provisions that would require more transparency in campaign spending.

Manchin’s March statement, however, said nothing about new limits on the severe manipulation of electoral district boundaries for partisan gain, a process often called gerrymandering. Advocates see those protections as critical, especially because the supreme court said for the first time just two years ago that there is no limit on how partisan lawmakers can be. The once-per-decade-redistricting cycle is set to get under way later this year, and Republicans are at a severe advantage in district drawing and will probably distort districts to their benefit.

Manchin also supports separate legislation that would re-implement a provision in the Voting Rights Act that would require places with a demonstrated record of voting discrimination to get voting changes pre-approved by the federal government before they went into effect. “Inaction is not an option,” Manchin said in a letter affirming his support for such a bill released with Lisa Murkowski, a Republican senator from Alaska. But even with Murkowski’s support, the bill is unlikely to get 60 votes. Voting advocates support the bill as a way of preventing future voting discrimination but say, on its own, it would not do anything to undo the restrictions that have already been enacted.

Pressure on Manchin will only escalate in the coming weeks. Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, has pledged to bring the bill up for a vote later this month, a move that could force Manchin to vote with Republicans to block the bill. And some experts have embraced pushing a more narrowly tailored law as a feasible way to get some voting reforms through the Senate.

“If Senator Manchin thinks there should be more input from Republicans – as there was in last month’s Senate markup, when several Republican amendments were adopted by the committee – you do that by advancing the bill through the legislative process,” Stephen Spaulding, senior counsel for public policy and government affairs at Common Cause.

“Senator Manchin should vote to advance the bill to a full floor debate, and not filibuster the bill with his Republican colleagues.”