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After a Day of Debate, Voting Rights Bills Head for Defeat in the Senate

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Without the votes to change Senate rules, Democrats cannot overcome a Republican filibuster against legislation intended to offset new state voting restrictions.
Senate Democrats on Wednesday made an impassioned case for voting rights legislation to counter what they painted as an onslaught of voter suppression in states around the country, but they once again ran into a buzz saw of opposition from Republicans, who mounted a fifth filibuster to block it. Though their defeat was assured, Democrats for the first time succeeded in forcing the Senate to debate the bill, leading to hours of raw and emotional arguments on the floor over civil rights, racism and how elections are conducted. “The people of this country will not tolerate silencing,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota and a chief author of the voting bills. “I think by voting this down, by not allowing us even to debate this, to get to the conclusion of a vote, that is silencing the people of America, all in the name of an archaic Senate rule that isn’t even in the Constitution. That’s just wrong.” With the legislation on track to be blocked on Wednesday night, Democrats were planning a last-ditch bid to alter the Senate’s filibuster rules and allow the voting rights measure to move forward with a simple majority. But that effort also appeared doomed because they lacked the support in their own ranks to change the rules. “This party-line push has never been about securing citizens’ rights,” said Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader. “It’s about expanding politicians’ power.” The looming back-to-back defeats amounted to a major setback for President Biden, who used a White House news conference during the Senate debate to lament Republicans’ success at thwarting his domestic agenda, including the voting rights measure. And it was a disheartening moment for congressional Democrats, who put the full force of their majority behind the issue despite the long odds of success. Republicans aggressively fought both the voting measures and the attempt to weaken the filibuster. They accused Democrats of manufacturing a crisis by exaggerating the impact of new state laws in an effort to realize a longstanding goal of gaining more control over state elections — and risking the uniqueness of the Senate to do so. In a day of sharp exchanges, one of the most dramatic was between two of the Senate’s three Black members, who clashed over charges by Democrats that the Republicans’ opposition to the legislation was a throwback to the Jim Crow days of denying Black Americans the vote. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, a conservative Republican raised by a single mother who worked 16-hour days as a nurse’s aide, hotly rejected the comparison. He noted that in the Jim Crow South, African Americans could be lynched, lose their jobs or be subjected to literacy tests if they dared to vote — a far cry from today. “As a person who was born in 1965, with a mama who understands racism, discrimination and separate and not equal, the grandfather who I took to vote and helped him cast his vote because he was unable to read, to have a conversation in a narrative that is blatantly false is offensive,” Mr.

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