Why Democrats Should Take Manchin’s Voting Rights Deal

Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia opposed the For the People Act as originally drafted by his party, the Democratic Party. He later proposed a series of amendments he said could win his vote. Election law expert Richard L. Hasen in an article published in Slate argues that the Democrats should accept his counter-offer:

Sen. Joe Manchin, who thus far has opposed Democrats’ big election reform bill, has finally made his counteroffer. On Wednesday, the West Virginian proposed a series of changes to the For the People Act that could win his vote. Democrats should grab the deal, even though it is not perfect, is still unlikely to pass, and doesn’t yet address the greatest threat in upcoming elections: the danger of election subversion.

Let’s begin with the lay of the land: Democrats have two big voting reform bills working their way through Congress. The first, the For the People Act (also commonly known as H.R. 1 or S 1), is a gargantuan bill that does many things from limiting partisan gerrymandering to requiring a period of early voting to establishing a public financing program for congressional campaigns to reenfranchising felons who have completed their time in prison to setting up a system of Supreme Court ethics reform. The second bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, would restore a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court killed off in its 2013 decision Shelby County v. Holder. That “preclearance” law required jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to get approval from the U.S. Department of Justice or a three-judge court in D.C. for any changes in voting rules. To get federal approval, the state had to show that its changes would not make protected minorities worse off. If preclearance were still in place, Georgia’s recent voting law and Texas’ proposed voting law would have to go through close review before implementation.

The For the People Act passed the House but has been stuck in the Senate. John Lewis is further behind, as House committees are seeking to build a strong legislative record for the inevitable court challenge that would follow any attempt to restore preclearance. Democrats have the slimmest of margins in the Senate, and Joe Manchin has been the sole Democratic senator not to endorse the For the People Act (though rumblings are that other Democrats signed on for messaging and are not happy with some parts of it). He has been more supportive of the John Lewis bill, but he suggested extending preclearance to all 50 states (a standard that may have a tough time before the Supreme Court). Even if Manchin signed on to support the bill, it would be the subject of a Senate filibuster. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is adamantly opposed to the bill, especially because of the campaign finance provisions he doesn’t like, and Manchin so far has strongly opposed eliminating the filibuster (even just for voting rights legislation, as I proposed in Slate in 2018).

Read the full article here.