All 50 Republican senators barely managed to block Democrats’ election overhaul bill on Tuesday night that would have ended voter ID requirements supported by 80 percent of Americans, allowed voting up to two weeks after election day, legalize ballot harvesting, and more.
In the nearly 900-page “For The People Act of 2021,” Democrat Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and fellow Democrats would have barred states from protecting themselves against loose voting structures that permeated the 2020 election such as mass vote-by-mail, lax voter ID, and widely inaccurate voting rolls. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris also supported the election bill, which Democrats made their No. 1 priority for their full control of Congress and the presidency this year.
“We can’t sit idly by while democracy is in peril – here, in America. We need to protect the sacred right to vote and ensure ‘We the People’ choose our leaders, the very foundation on which our democracy rests. We urgently need the For The People Act. Send it to my desk,” Biden wrote Tuesday afternoon.
We can’t sit idly by while democracy is in peril – here, in America. We need to protect the sacred right to vote and ensure “We the People” choose our leaders, the very foundation on which our democracy rests. We urgently need the For The People Act.
Send it to my desk.
— President Biden (@POTUS) June 22, 2021
After all of the GOP legislators filibustered the legislation, however, the 60 votes necessary for the bill to pass a procedural vote were not there. Democrats have repeatedly threatened to end this slim protection for minority interests in the Senate, and its existence appears to rest entirely on the good graces of West Virginia Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin since Republicans lost the Senate through runoff elections in Georgia earlier this year.
“Our democracy is stronger when everyone participates—and it is weaker when people are denied meaningful access to participation. Today, as Senate Democrats united around the For The People Act, Senate Republicans voted against advancing it,” Harris wrote in a statement.
Our democracy is stronger when everyone participates—and it is weaker when people are denied meaningful access to participation. Today, as Senate Democrats united around the For The People Act, Senate Republicans voted against advancing it. My Statement: https://t.co/BmEqoGow0s
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) June 23, 2021
“Whichever label Democrats slap on their bill, the substance remains the same,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said. “It’s always been a plan to rewrite the ground rules of American politics. Today, the Senate’s going to fulfill our founding purpose, stop this partisan power grab, and reject S. 1.”
Both leftist legislators and the corporate media originally claimed, against all evidence, that the unconstitutional bill would protect Americans’ voting rights, but Republicans were quick to call the proposal what it was: a political ploy to give Democrats “ultimate supervisory power over federal elections.” That didn’t stop the left from trotting out their usual “racist” smears of Republicans and making evidence-free claims Republicans want to “restrict voter access.”
Not only would the bill have let the federal government “micromanage” state elections, a possibly unconstitutional offense, but one report suggests it would open the floodgates for partisan activity within the IRS and the Federal Elections Commission, hijack federal courts away from election criticisms, and “violate the First Amendment with respect to a vast range of legal activity.”
The attorneys general of 20 states also agreed that HR 1 would “invert that constitutional structure, commandeer state resources, confuse and muddle elections procedures, and erode faith in our elections and systems of governance.”
