On Wednesday, CNN congressional correspondent Manu Raju reported that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has outlined his plan to get a pair of Democratic voting rights bills passed through the Senate — in a way that he hopes will get holdout Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) on board with a rules change that would help it get around a legislative filibuster.
The plan is not entirely worked out, but basically involves the House passing the voting rights bills together as a "message" resolution, allowing debate to begin without a filibuster on the motion to proceed. This would still mean the bill would be subject to the 60-vote threshold to end a filibuster in order to get to the final vote — but at this point Schumer would have the Senate actively debating the bill and, if things go to plan, show Manchin and Sinema that there is no other way of passing the legislation they have signed on to.
\u2014 Once the House passes the bill, it will come over in the form of a \u201cmessage from the House.\u201d That allows them to skip the first procedural vote in the Senate and get onto the bill with 51 votes.— Manu Raju (@Manu Raju) 1642022202
Schumer: \u201cOf course, to ultimately end debate and pass the voting rights legislation, we will need 10 Republicans to join us \u2013 which we know from past experience will not happen \u2013 or we will need to change the Senate rules as has been done many times before.\u201d— Manu Raju (@Manu Raju) 1642022306
The two voting rights bills in question are the Freedom to Vote Act, which cracks down on partisan gerrymandering and sets minimum standards of voter access across the country, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which restores and fixes the preclearance standards for voting law changes that the Supreme Court gutted in 2013. Republicans are broadly opposed to both bills.
Manchin and Sinema have both endorsed these voting rights proposals, but have opposed changes to Senate rules done on a party line basis that would be necessary to pass them.
