Senate Republicans Tuesday blocked sweeping legislation on election and campaign finance reforms that Democrats said is crucial to ensuring voting rights and saving democracy but the GOP blasted as a partisan power grab.
The “For the People Act” needed 60 votes to clear a procedural vote in the Senate Tuesday, but Republicans filibustered and killed the legislation from advancing to debate. No Republicans joined with the 50 Democrats on the motion to proceed.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Republicans won’t stand for Democrats’ attempt to impose new voting standards on states that would “rig” elections in their favor. He called the substance of the nearly 900-page bill “rotten” to its core.
The rotten inner workings of Democrats’ S.1 power grab have been thoroughly exposed to the light. Whichever label Democrats slap on their bill, the substance remains the same. https://t.co/1mU9ghcajr
— Leader McConnell (@LeaderMcConnell) June 22, 2021
Republicans took issue with imposing federal standards on state elections that they said would weaken state ID requirements. They also oppose starting a new public financing system for congressional elections and politicizing the Federal Elections Commission that enforces campaign finance laws.
Even GOP moderate Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said she couldn’t support the “partisan federal takeover of the election system.” In a floor speech, she said she’d back elements of the bill and will co-sponsor the separate John Lewis Voting Rights Act, but can’t back Democrats’ “one-size-fits-all” reforms.
Democrats, with the White House on their side, framed the legislation as an urgent priority to save democracy in the face of GOP efforts in state legislatures around the country to pass “voter suppression laws” in the wake of former President Trump’s 2020 election loss and unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud. – READ MORE
Listen to the insightful Thomas Paine Podcast Below --