Senate Republicans blocked the Democrats’ election bill on Wednesday — and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer isn’t happy.
The Senate heard the Freedom To Vote Act on Wednesday. However, all 50 Republicans opposed holding a vote on the Senate floor, killing the bill — the Senate requires 60 votes to stop a filibuster.
However, Schumer used a clever move to keep the fight alive — he switched to a “no” vote on his own bill so that it could be reintroduced later.
The Freedom To Vote Act was introduced by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D–Minn. It would have resulted in an unprecedented federalization of elections.
By contrast, the previously defeated John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act did away with I.D. requirements for first-time, mail-in votes. The John Lewis Act requested only “a sworn written statement, signed by the individual under penalty of perjury, attesting to the individual’s identity and attesting that the individual is eligible to vote in the election.” The John Lewis Act failed in the Senate last August.
According to Klobuchar’s press release, the bill would have made election day a national holiday, set up voting drop boxes across the country, mandate at least two weeks of early voting, allow felons to vote after their release from prison, make it difficult to remove invalid voters from the rolls, require same-day voter registration by 2024.
However, the Freedom To Vote Act still paled in comparison to the other two election bills introduced by Congressional Democrats this year. For example, the Freedom To Vote Act makes “no change on identification requirements for first-time voters registering by mail,” according to the text of the bill itself.
Nonetheless, the Freedom To Vote Act failed, and its defeat left Schumer railing at Republican lawmakers over recent voting integrity laws.
“These laws will make it harder for millions of Americans to participate in their government,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D–N.Y. claimed on Wednesday. “If there is anything worthy of the Senate’s attention, if there’s any issue that merits debate on this floor, it is protecting our democracy from the forces that are trying to unravel it from the inside out.”
However, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R–Ky., said he will defend voting integrity laws.
“The same rotten core is all still there,” McConnell said that day. “As long as Senate Democrats remain fixated on their radical agenda, this body will continue to do the job the framers assigned it and stop terrible ideas in their tracks.”
In August, Sen. Joe Manchin became the sole Democrat to oppose the John Lewis Act, but he cosponsored Wednesday’s Freedom To Vote Act.
Manchin wants to preserve the filibuster. However, some Democrats demanded that Manchin abolish the filibuster after seeing the Republicans mount equally strong opposition to both the Freedom To Vote Act and the John Lewis Act.
Sen. Sherrod Brown told The Washington Post that met with Manchin on Tuesday.
At the last minute, Schumer changed his vote from “yes” to “no” on late notice, and the final tally became 49-51.
Under the Senate’s parliamentary rules, the majority leader can vote no in order to reconsider the bill at a later date.
In other words, Schumer wants to fight again in the future.
The Democrats’ Freedom to Vote Act is a Trojan Horse for Democrats taking over elections to solidify power for the next hundred years.
It's not about protecting voting rights. It's about protecting power for Democrats.
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) October 20, 2021
The Horn editorial team