Manchin Says He’ll Vote Against Voting Rights Bill, Dooming Dems’ Election Overhaul Efforts

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Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on Sunday said he won’t vote for his party’s For the People Act, a bill focused on expanding voting rights. His decision all but dooms Democrats’ push for comprehensive election reform.

In an opinion piece published in the Charleston Gazette-Mail, Manchin criticized the bill as “partisan” and suggested he would only support legislation that garnered Republican support.

“I believe that partisan voting legislation will destroy the already weakening binds of our democracy, and for that reason, I will vote against the For the People Act,” Manchin wrote.

The bill ― co-sponsored by every Senate Democrat except for Manchin ― would require states to implement election reforms including early voting, no-excuse absentee ballots, and automatic and same-day voter registration. It would also restore voting rights to ex-felons while making it harder to purge voter rolls, among many other things.

The proposed legislation passed through the House in March on a nearly party-line vote. Last month, the bill advanced out of the Senate Rules Committee, with Republicans remaining universally opposed to it.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said recently that his chamber would vote on the bill this month, but Manchin’s announcement leaves little hope for its passage.

Manchin’s position as a moderate Democrat, often seen as a swing vote on key measures, has made him one of Congress’ most powerful figures as President Joe Biden seeks to move forward with his legislative agenda.

The Senate is essentially split along party lines, with 50 Republicans, 48 Democrats and two independents who reliably vote with Democrats. In a tied vote, Vice President Kamala Harris would cast the tie-breaking vote.

With Republicans’ unwavering opposition, the For the People Act is expected to face a Senate filibuster ― a procedural rule that requires the support of 60 senators to move to a vote on final passage for many measures. That means the bill is essentially dead on arrival unless Democrats change the Senate’s filibuster rules.

But Manchin has remained opposed to such a move and in his opinion piece, he stated that he “will not vote to weaken or eliminate the filibuster.”

“For as long as I have the privilege of being your U.S. senator,” he wrote, “I will fight to represent the people of West Virginia, to seek bipartisan compromise no matter how difficult and to develop the political bonds that end divisions and help unite the country we love.”

In the piece, Manchin denounced both “state laws that seek to needlessly restrict voting” as well as “politicians who ignore the need to secure our elections.”

“[C]ongressional action on federal voting rights legislation must be the result of both Democrats and Republicans coming together to find a pathway forward or we risk further dividing and destroying the republic we swore to protect and defend as elected officials,” Manchin wrote.

But at the state level, Republicans have seized on former President Donald Trump’s lies about a “stolen” election by moving to pass restrictive voter laws. At least 14 states have enacted laws this year that make it harder to vote.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-manc ... fb31c8ebb7

Why doesn't Manchild just go ahead and switch parties since he is acting like a Repug lite or more like TFG lite. MoscowMitch is delighted in Manchild's behavior.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: Manchin Says He’ll Vote Against Voting Rights Bill, Dooming Dems’ Election Overhaul Efforts

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Back in the old days of the 1950s he would have been invited to meet with the Senate Majority Leader LBJ in the majority leader's room. When he arrived he would see LBJ and the Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn. They would invite him to sit down offer him some bourbon and branch water. Then they would remind him how much they would like to see this bill passed and sent to the president, which supports the passage. They would also remind him how much Federal money goes to West Virginia and it would be a shame to see that money going to other states, that were more accommodating on the bill passing. Also there is the issue of coal mine safety and we could see many more inspectors being sent to West Virginia to inspect and then close mines till all infractions are corrected.

That is the way those two ran the Congress, quietly but with an iron fist.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: Manchin Says He’ll Vote Against Voting Rights Bill, Dooming Dems’ Election Overhaul Efforts

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Let's keep in mind where Manchin is from. You're not going to get a Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi out of West Virginia. Manchin could NEVER run as a republican, he's sane. So we get a very conservative democrat. Sucks, but it beats the alternative...at least he can be reasoned with.
“I think there’s a right-wing conspiracy to promote the idea of a left-wing conspiracy”

Re: Manchin Says He’ll Vote Against Voting Rights Bill, Dooming Dems’ Election Overhaul Efforts

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Democrats’ self-proclaimed top priority in Congress this year is dead in its current form. But the fight over how Americans vote is still raging.

The party’s “For the People Act,” a sprawling bill that would rewrite the rules governing federal elections, has been stalled in the Senate since narrowly passing the House on a near party-line vote earlier this year. But Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) came out against the bill in his home-state Charleston Gazette-Mail over the weekend, dooming this version of the legislation in the 50-50 chamber.

The fierce backlash to Manchin’s announcement reflects how important the bill was to many Democrats, even more than its label in the House and the Senate: H.R. 1 and S. 1, the monikers traditionally given to the majority’s top priority. Activists and lawmakers on Capitol Hill cast the legislation as a bulwark against restrictive new Republican proposals on voting in states across the country.

But the bill also became a vehicle for all types of government reform — including proposals that have been bogged down in filibusters, partisan opposition and even internal resistance among some Democrats over the last decade, like sweeping rules about “dark money” disclosure and how campaigns can raise their money.

Here are some of the provisions that are in the bill — and what could come next.

The voting section would overhaul how federal elections are run

The most heavily emphasized section of the For the People Act would set a slew of required policy mandates for voting in federal elections in every state. This includes mandating online, automatic and same-day voter registration, requiring at least two weeks of in-person early voting, and allowing anyone to vote by mail without needing an excuse. The bill would also require that sworn statements or student IDs could fill ID requirements for casting a ballot, and it requires the use of paper ballots, among its many provisions.

Democrats have pushed the voting section with increased urgency since the 2020 election, as several Republican-controlled states passed bills that add new restrictions to their voting systems. The policies would amount to the first major federal overhaul of elections since 2002. It has been repeatedly derided by Republicans as a Democratic “power grab” — and Manchin prominently cites Republican opposition to the bill as why he can’t support it.

“Democrats in Congress have proposed a sweeping election reform bill called the For the People Act. This more than 800-page bill has garnered zero Republican support. Why?” Manchin wrote in the Gazette-Mail. “The truth, I would argue, is that voting and election reform that is done in a partisan manner will all but ensure partisan divisions continue to deepen.”

The sprawling proposal would also make huge changes to campaign finance and government ethics laws

While the bill has gotten broad attention for the impact it would have on voting, it also contains major campaign finance and ethics provisions, borrowing from a number of smaller Democratic proposals in recent years.

The bill includes the DISCLOSE Act, a decade-old proposal that would require more nonprofit organizations that currently keep their donors secret to name their contributors and prove more details about their spending if they get involved in politics. Undisclosed political spending from nonprofits has been a booming business over the last decade: The Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign finance watchdog group, tracked over $1 billion in “dark money” spending from undisclosed donors in the 2020 election.

H.R. 1 would also breathe new life into the public financing system for presidential campaigns and create a new one for congressional elections, and it would overhaul the Federal Election Commission, the perpetually deadlocked agency in charge of policing campaign finance laws.

Meanwhile, the ethics section takes specific aim at some of former President Donald Trump’s behavior: One part would require presidents and vice presidents to publicly disclose their tax returns and “divest of all financial interests” that pose a conflict of interest.

It would also broaden rules about who is required to register as a lobbyist, set new rules about when executive branch employees have to recuse themselves, crack down on many types of foreign lobbying and make federal government employees wait longer — two years instead of one — to become lobbyists after leaving their government jobs.

Parts of the bill have generated opposition in the past — sometimes from Democrats

Manchin’s op-ed did not cite specific provisions of the legislation he opposes, but he has called the bill “too broad” in the past. Indeed, other Democrats have also quietly raised concerns about parts of the bill. Another election provision in the act would require that redistricting, the process of redrawing the state’s congressional lines, be conducted by an independent commission as opposed to carried out by the state legislatures.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have said they feared that independent commissions, as opposed to the partisan process even in red states, could dilute Black voters’ representation in Congress. Ultimately, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) was the lone Democrat to vote against H.R. 1 in the House, saying “my constituents oppose the redistricting portion of the bill” in a statement at the time.

Some election administrators who support the principles of the bill have also raised concerns about how they would implement it. Supporters of the package argue that those concerns could be addressed in a conference committee on the (unlikely) chance it becomes law.

On campaign finance, the public campaign financing ideas made some congressional Democrats squeamish and even made an occasional appearance in Republican political ads, even though the legislation has not become law. And an unusual coalition has formed to oppose the proposed disclosure requirements for nonprofits, from conservative organizations like the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity to the American Civil Liberties Union, which has argued that broad disclosure language could run “a risk of chilling public discussion.”

Democrats are taking another swing at voting rights with a different piece of legislation

While Manchin appears to have killed off advocates’ faint hopes of passing the For the People Act, he has gotten behind a different, important piece of Democratic voting legislation.

The West Virginia senator has urged members to throw their support behind the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act, which has not been formally reintroduced this Congress after passing in the House in 2019. While voting rights activists have pushed for something broader, that bill would restore a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act: “preclearance” requirements, which mandated that the Department of Justice or a D.C. federal court approve any changes to state and local election laws in certain places — from redistricting to changing early-voting policies — before they took effect.

A 2013 Supreme Court decision, Shelby County v. Holder, effectively neutered that preclearance requirement, with the Court ruling the formula to decide which jurisdictions needed preclearance was outdated. But Manchin — who has noted that legislation reauthorizing that formula passed the Senate 98-0 in 2006 — has argued common ground can be found on the bill named after John Lewis, which some members of the CBC have also pushed. Manchin has also said he’d favor nationwide preclearance instead of a formula targeted at jurisdictions with a history of discriminatory intent, which some activists have embraced.

Still, bipartisan support may still be hard to come by. Manchin has partnered with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) to push for the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act “through regular order,” and he remains steadfast in not changing or otherwise modifying the filibuster.

Murkowski was the only Republican senator to cosponsor the legislation in 2019, while Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) was the only House Republican to vote in favor of it.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/0 ... hin-492061


When LBJ was president, Everett Dirksen of IL was the Senate Republican leader and Charlie Halleck of IN was the House Republican leader. The had a weekly TV show which was known as the Ev & Charlie Show where they'd bash LBJ and the Democrats. Then they'd go down to the WH and sip bourbon with LBJ and make deals and legislation was passed.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Manchin Says He’ll Vote Against Voting Rights Bill, Dooming Dems’ Election Overhaul Efforts

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TrueTexan wrote: Sun Jun 06, 2021 11:01 am
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on Sunday said he won’t vote for his party’s For the People Act, a bill focused on expanding voting rights. His decision all but dooms Democrats’ push for comprehensive election reform.

In an opinion piece published in the Charleston Gazette-Mail, Manchin criticized the bill as “partisan” and suggested he would only support legislation that garnered Republican support.

“I believe that partisan voting legislation will destroy the already weakening binds of our democracy, and for that reason, I will vote against the For the People Act,” Manchin wrote.

The bill ― co-sponsored by every Senate Democrat except for Manchin ― would require states to implement election reforms including early voting, no-excuse absentee ballots, and automatic and same-day voter registration. It would also restore voting rights to ex-felons while making it harder to purge voter rolls, among many other things.

The proposed legislation passed through the House in March on a nearly party-line vote. Last month, the bill advanced out of the Senate Rules Committee, with Republicans remaining universally opposed to it.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said recently that his chamber would vote on the bill this month, but Manchin’s announcement leaves little hope for its passage.

Manchin’s position as a moderate Democrat, often seen as a swing vote on key measures, has made him one of Congress’ most powerful figures as President Joe Biden seeks to move forward with his legislative agenda.

The Senate is essentially split along party lines, with 50 Republicans, 48 Democrats and two independents who reliably vote with Democrats. In a tied vote, Vice President Kamala Harris would cast the tie-breaking vote.

With Republicans’ unwavering opposition, the For the People Act is expected to face a Senate filibuster ― a procedural rule that requires the support of 60 senators to move to a vote on final passage for many measures. That means the bill is essentially dead on arrival unless Democrats change the Senate’s filibuster rules.

But Manchin has remained opposed to such a move and in his opinion piece, he stated that he “will not vote to weaken or eliminate the filibuster.”

“For as long as I have the privilege of being your U.S. senator,” he wrote, “I will fight to represent the people of West Virginia, to seek bipartisan compromise no matter how difficult and to develop the political bonds that end divisions and help unite the country we love.”

In the piece, Manchin denounced both “state laws that seek to needlessly restrict voting” as well as “politicians who ignore the need to secure our elections.”

“[C]ongressional action on federal voting rights legislation must be the result of both Democrats and Republicans coming together to find a pathway forward or we risk further dividing and destroying the republic we swore to protect and defend as elected officials,” Manchin wrote.

But at the state level, Republicans have seized on former President Donald Trump’s lies about a “stolen” election by moving to pass restrictive voter laws. At least 14 states have enacted laws this year that make it harder to vote.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-manc ... fb31c8ebb7

Why doesn't Manchild just go ahead and switch parties since he is acting like a Repug lite or more like TFG lite. MoscowMitch is delighted in Manchild's behavior.
So is trump the traitor...

Re: Manchin Says He’ll Vote Against Voting Rights Bill, Dooming Dems’ Election Overhaul Efforts

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TrueTexan wrote: Sun Jun 06, 2021 2:07 pm Back in the old days of the 1950s he would have been invited to meet with the Senate Majority Leader LBJ in the majority leader's room. When he arrived he would see LBJ and the Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn. They would invite him to sit down offer him some bourbon and branch water. Then they would remind him how much they would like to see this bill passed and sent to the president, which supports the passage. They would also remind him how much Federal money goes to West Virginia and it would be a shame to see that money going to other states, that were more accommodating on the bill passing. Also there is the issue of coal mine safety and we could see many more inspectors being sent to West Virginia to inspect and then close mines till all infractions are corrected.

That is the way those two ran the Congress, quietly but with an iron fist.
And they WOULD have acted, too! Manchin is a thick-headed, selfish bastard who either knows he's full of shit, or is kidding himself. At this point, the ONLY reason he's not switched parties is he has FAR more power as the key linchpin to a unified government than he'd be as the deciding vote for split government. Even so, he's totally derailed not just Biden's agenda, but the path to PREVENTING the nation's crash into pure fascism...which is very likely now. Sinema is quietly even worse.
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

Re: Manchin Says He’ll Vote Against Voting Rights Bill, Dooming Dems’ Election Overhaul Efforts

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Manchin is a tool for the republican party. He cow tows to the repubs in his state but claims he is a damocrat. He should be thrown out of the party and Senima as well. I so upset I gave her money. But she was running a race against McSally. I fell she is stabbing me in the back. And I send her emails every week telling her she owes me lots of money. I will not vote for her again.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,”

Re: Manchin Says He’ll Vote Against Voting Rights Bill, Dooming Dems’ Election Overhaul Efforts

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I don't understand the obsession with Manchin. In a perfectly even Senate, every vote is the deciding vote.

Schumer and Biden can't pressure him. His response is "nice majority you have, would be a shame if Mitch got his mitts on it." Remember, this is the guy who shot up climate legislation for a campaign ad. All the former Democratic elected officials in West Virginia either died, switched parties, or lost.

Re: Manchin Says He’ll Vote Against Voting Rights Bill, Dooming Dems’ Election Overhaul Efforts

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wings wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 9:53 pm I don't understand the obsession with Manchin. In a perfectly even Senate, every vote is the deciding vote.

Schumer and Biden can't pressure him. His response is "nice majority you have, would be a shame if Mitch got his mitts on it." Remember, this is the guy who shot up climate legislation for a campaign ad. All the former Democratic elected officials in West Virginia either died, switched parties, or lost.

I agree wings, the current governor James Justice ran as a Democrat and won and then changed to the Republican Party. Manchin has gotten elected and reelected as governor and senator as a centrist Democrat, he's in tune with West Virginia. Yes Democrats are acting like they have a super majority and can pressure senators, they don't.

I've given up listening to anything political on the radio recently because of the steady drumbeat bashing Manchin. The Democrats are attacking him and so is CNN, MSNBC and other media sources, it's a well organized campaign probably from the DNC. Like Fox and other right wing sources get their memos from the RNC.

Every campaign financing bill that I remember that passed Congress has been a major battle and the result was bi-partisan, neither side got everything they wanted. Democrats tossed it in here like it's nothing and knowing the bill wouldn't pass. The whole bill was political payback to groups that supported them in 2020.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Manchin Says He’ll Vote Against Voting Rights Bill, Dooming Dems’ Election Overhaul Efforts

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Doyle McManus, LA Times
Officially, the bill is still clinging to life. But Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, the majority party’s stubbornly maverick 50th vote, signed its writ of execution last week, complaining that the bill looked too “partisan” to him. That made HR 1’s demise inevitable; even its advocates knew it was unlikely to get 50 votes in its current form — let alone survive a filibuster, which requires 60 votes to overcome.

The problem with HR 1 [For the People Act] is that, unpalatable as it may be for other Democrats to admit, Manchin is right. As election law expert and reform advocate Richard L. Hasen of UC Irvine noted, the bill is “a wish list of progressive proposals.”

It includes federally mandated automatic voter registration and minimum standards for absentee voting, good things that most Republicans oppose — ostensibly because they would be federal incursions into an area normally left to the states, but also because they might make it easier for Democrats to win elections.

And the bill doesn’t stop there. It also includes more exotic measures like a public financing system for congressional elections, new ethics rules for the Supreme Court, and campaign finance reforms that Democrats have sought for more than a decade.

HR 1’s collapse comes at a time when electoral democracy is under threat. Republican-controlled state legislatures are still passing new laws to make it harder to vote. So it’s time to stop mourning HR 1, which has always been a long shot, and start thinking about what needs to happen next.

First, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York should take Manchin at his word that he genuinely wants to pass bipartisan voting reforms, and ask him to convene his vaunted negotiating group of 20 Senate centrists to work on them.

Some parts of HR 1 have broader support than others, including minimum early-voting standards and ballot security measures that are eminently worth passing. In public, Schumer and other Democrats haven’t acknowledged that HR 1 can’t pass, but they are already exploring privately whether pieces of it might.

“The issues in HR 1 are still in play,” Wendy Weiser of the Brennan Center for Democracy at New York University told me.

Second, Democrats should expand a second election reform measure, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which Manchin says he supports. The bill would update the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which required states with a history of racially discriminatory laws to seek Justice Department approval for new election rules. The Supreme Court effectively gutted the law in 2013, but left room for Congress to pass an improved, updated version.

One problem with the Lewis Act is that it would apply only to new rules that states propose; it would not apply to the many voting restrictions that Republican-controlled state legislatures are passing now — 22 new laws this year, with more to come. Those new statutes include the Georgia law that makes it a misdemeanor to give water to voters while they are waiting in line and prohibits early-voting sites from staying open after 7 p.m.

“The [John Lewis] bill could be amended to make it retrospective as well as prospective,” Weiser said — although she noted that negotiating universally applicable standards for reviewing state laws would not be an easy task.

Third, and perhaps most urgent, Congress needs to make it harder for anti-democratic politicians to overturn the results of the next presidential election. That means rewriting the 1877 Electoral Count Act, a once-forgotten but justly maligned statute that Trump tried to use last year to block the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral vote.

The 1877 law was passed in an attempt to establish rules for Congress to decide the outcome of a presidential election when states fail to report clear or uncontested results — but in its first major test in practice, it proved to be an ungainly mess.

The law allows state legislatures to overrule their own voters in the event of a “failed election,” without defining what a failed election might be. Last year, Trump and his allies appealed to legislators in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and Arizona — all states Biden won — to award their electoral votes to him instead. None of the legislatures complied, but there’s no guarantee that future candidates won’t try the same gambit.

The 1877 law also allows Congress to contest and potentially discard individual states’ electoral votes through an odd, undemocratic process. That’s what eight GOP senators and 139 Republican House members were doing when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. Their effort to block Biden’s election also failed, but the law remains on the books for future insurgents to use.

There’s no guarantee, of course, that any of those reforms will attract enough Republican support in the 50-50 Senate to overcome a filibuster. But with democracy at risk, all 100 senators should be required to vote on them — and explain their decisions to the people.
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/ ... hey-can-do
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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