With help from Manchin and Sinema, a Republican revolution from below is driving national policy
CNN
Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country are approving a wave of new voting restrictions on virtually party-line votes that require only a simple majority to pass. The US Supreme Court has likewise decided the key voting rights rulings that helped trigger this surge of state legislation on a party-line, majority-vote basis over the past decade.
But the announcements last week by Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona that they will not support exempting voting rights legislation from the filibuster means Congress can respond to these moves only with a bipartisan supermajority of 60 votes.
Their decision effectively provides Senate Republicans a veto on whether Congress can undo the restrictions on voting advanced by their fellow Republicans in the states and GOP-appointed justices on the Supreme Court. And that means Democrats have little chance through this decade of preserving a national floor of voting rights.
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