Can Democrats Avoid a Total Train Wreck on Voting Rights?
The rubber is meeting the road in Washington on voting rights. Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, is set to bring the For the People Act to the floor on Tuesday, setting up a vote that wont bring the broad election bill any closer to Joe Bidens desk, but that could at least make plain where everyoneincluding members of a not-quite-unified Democratic partystands on the legislation. Itsputting their feet to the fire to actually put up or shut up, as Democratic strategist Juanita Tolliver put it to MSNBC Sunday. While the House-passed bill is seen by many in the party as the Democrats best current legislative chance to address the GOPs aggressive, coordinated, multi-pronged assault on voting rights, Senator Joe Manchin is not the only member of the caucus who has misgivings about it. As Politico reported Monday, the conservative Democratwho currently sits at the fulcrum of power in a fiercely-divided D.C.has been a convenient a figure for some powerful members of the party. To those rightly concerned that his insistence on playing nice with Republicans could not only doom his own partys prospects in coming elections, but could help his friends across the aisle erode democratic institutions, the West Virginian is a curse. But to those in the party who view the version of the bill the House approved in the spring as overly broad or comprised of reforms they disapprove of, hes been a blessing: a fall guy who can hold up the legislation while shielding them from the wrath hes shouldered. With a vote imminent, that could soon change. Schumer, in public remarks in support of the bill, has maintained that Democrats are all pulling in the same direction on the need to protect the vote. We Democrats wish a voting rights bill would be bipartisan. By all rights, it should be, he said in a floor speech last week. But the actions in state legislatures were totally partisan. The upcoming Senate vote, though, will be a test of Democrats unity on the crucial issue: If they can bridge divides, as they have worked in recent days to do, they may be able to shine an unflattering spotlight on the GOP; if they cant, the vote will expose their own fault lines. There appears to be some promise that the Democrats will find common ground. The compromise proposal Manchin pitched last week was surprisingly substantive, and earned the support of Stacey Abrams, one of the partys most important voices on voting rights. While there are elements of his plan that make some Democrats uneasy, it seemed to open the door to broader agreement. As we speak, Schumer told reporters Sunday, we are working to come up with an agreement to compromise with Joe Manchin.  Of course, reaching an agreement among members of the same party should be the easy part, and the fact that theyve struggled to mount a unified response to the GOPs anti-democratic crusade makes it hard to be confident theyll actually be able to stop it through legislation. Republican leaders wasted no time announcing their opposition to the compromise plan, which theyre tying to Abrams, and are throwing everything they have at Donald Trumps Big Lie: Theyre making it harder to vote, working to grant themselves more power over the elections process, and preparing to gerrymander more favorable districts ahead of 2022 midterms. In a move that has alarmed voting rights advocates, Georgia announced Friday that it is removing more than 100,000 ineligible voters from its rolls. Making sure Georgias voter rolls are up to date is key to ensuring the integrity of our elections, Brad Raffensperger said in a statement. That is why I fought and beat Stacey Abrams in court in 2019 to remove nearly 300,000 obsolete voter files before the November election, and will do so again this year.  Democrats seem united in their concern as they look on at all this. If the right to vote is in danger, then our democracy is in danger, Senator Amy Klobuchar, who supports eliminating the filibuster to pass voter protections and other key Biden agenda items, wrote last week. Those are the stakes. But until they show the same unity in their approach to protecting the franchise as their counterparts are in attacking it, theyll be playing in the 2022 and 2024 elections with one hand tied behind their back. One hopes, then, that this week will be clarifying: Democrats will have an opportunity not only to settle their own divisions on the matter, but to see once again how few their opponents seem to have. Join Vanity Fair to receive full access to VF.com and the complete online archive now.