WASHINGTON, Nov 4 — Republicans thwarted a push in the US Senate Wednesday to secure voting rights for millions of Americans amid a wave of punitive new restrictions in conservative states.
Named for a leading US civil rights figure and Democratic congressman who died last year, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act aimed to restore protections lost in Supreme Court decisions over the last decade.
It would also have reinstated a crucial requirement that states changing their election rules get the reforms cleared beforehand by the federal Justice Department.
All but one Republican rejected the measure — their third straight block on even allowing debate on voting rights legislation — ensuring it could not get the 60 votes needed to advance.
“Provisions in the bill have passed the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support five times, most recently 98-0 in 2006. Let there be a debate and let there be a vote,” US President Joe Biden said in a statement.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told colleagues on the floor that the blocking of the measure marked “a low, low point in the history of this body.”
“Today’s obstruction was only the latest in a series of disturbing turns for the Republican Party,” he said.
Republican-run states have spent months leveraging ex-president Donald Trump’s false claims of widespread election fraud to introduce restrictive laws that opponents say are an assault on voting rights.
Some 19 states have signed off on 33 laws this year which the liberal-leaning Brennan Center for Justice classifies as voter suppression measures — such as outlawing drive-thru and 24-hour voting as well as the promotion of mail-in ballots, and even criminalising handing out drinks to people in voting lines.
“The right to vote freely and the right to have your vote counted are fundamental. In the 2020 election, more than 150 million Americans of every age, of every race, of every background, exercised their right to vote,” the White House said in a statement.
“This historic level of participation in the face of a once-in-a-century pandemic should have been celebrated by everyone. Instead, some have sought to delegitimize the election and make it harder to vote, in many cases by targeting the methods of voting that made it possible for many voters to participate.”
Elections are administered locally in the United States, and Republicans tend to see Washington telling states how to run their own votes as federal overreach.
New laws such as photo identification requirements — a normal measure in many countries — are just common sense, they argue.
Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, the sole Republican backing the John Lewis act, said in a statement Tuesday protecting the ability of all Americans to have their voices heard in elections “defines us as a nation.” — AFP
