CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Senator Joe Manchin has proposed making Election Day a Federal holiday. The GOP would also like the make it a holiday, but a Voter Suppression holiday. A holiday from voting rights for minority and young voters. They also want to make every school day a holiday from the Critical Race Theory being taught.
Today, two days after Juneteenth was celebrated for the first time as a Federal holiday, Republicans in the Senate are expected to successfully filibuster opening debate on the For The People Act which, along with the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, would block the voter suppression laws now being proposed and passed in Republican-led States, including Ohio.
Tuesday’s Senate vote is not on the Bill itself. It’s simply a procedural vote on whether to even open floor debate on the Bill. Democrats know they will lose the vote, that does not mean the Bill is dead.
Democrats will ‘table’ the bill for the July recess. During which time Senators will return to their States where the majority of voters, Democrat and Republicans, support the For The People Act. When they return, Democrats are first expected to vote on reverting/reforming the filibuster rules back to what they originally were. Then they will bring the For The People Act, with likely revisions, back on the floor for debate and a vote where it will stand a better chance of passing.
The original filibuster rules were most famously on display in the Jimmy Stewart movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” They require the member of Congress filibustering to speak on the floor for the entire time and, I believe, for 40 other members to be present.
Currently it’s a “no-show” filibuster. When Senator Ron Johnson was filibustering recently he wasn’t even on the floor often. Having to stay on the floor, and other party members having to be present, is a disincentive for prolonged filibusters and abuse of the tactic, which Republicans have been doing.
Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sineman wrote in a Washington Post Op-Ed that she was adamant about keeping the filibuster and its current 60 vote threshold, while other Democrats want the threshold at least lowered if they can’t kill the filibuster outright. Yet even if keeping the 60 vote threshold, under the original filibuster rules of having to stay on the floor, there would be fewer filibusters and fewer that would last and succeed.
The filibuster tactic is not in the U.S. Constitution. While it’s not true that the filibuster was created to stop Civil Right’s measures, that’s what it’s most famously and most often been used for, and it is again now, to stop safeguarding the voting rights and access for minorities.
Republicans are also working to stop the Critical Race Theory from being taught in schools. One of the aspects of the theory holds that racism is systemic and institutional. What keeps getting skipped over in the debate of the theory is that it’s just a theory. There are plenty of theories taught in schools, in science, philosophy, civics and history classes. They aren’t all proven facts, that’s why they’re designated as “theories,” but they are still taught because they provoke educational thought and analysis.
Considering the expected Republican no vote on the For The People Act, it is tragically fitting that Monday marked the anniversary of the infamous ‘Mississippi Burning’ murders of 1964, in which three Civil Rights workers were shot to death in the State.
James Chaney of Mississippi and a New Yorkers Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner had traveled to meet with members of a Mississippi church that had been burned and to register Black voters. They were arrested and jailed on trumped up speeding charges. When they were released they were followed as they drove out of town by police and townspeople. Their car was stopped, they were abducted, taken away, shot to death and buried in a shallow grave.
In memory of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner, voting rights must not be buried by Republicans in the U.S. Senate and State Legislatures, including in Ohio.
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June 22, 2021 at 06:05PM
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