January 19, 2022
The voting rights bills failed the United States senate and no rules of the senate filibuster have changed.
I told you that’s what would happen in this video on Monday.
Sooooo now what?
First – it means voting rights legislation is not dead forever. It just means these specific voting rights bills are not moving forward for now – even though they passed the House.
Second – the filibuster remains intact in the Senate. But what is the filibuster? Here’s the quick history and how it works.
Generally speaking, the Senate has a tradition of unlimited debate. The filibuster is an action – unique to the Senate– designed for the minority party to drag out that debate with the goal of delaying or preventing a vote on a certain bill. Literally – talking the bill to death. In the old days – at least one Senator from the minority party would have to physically stand on the Senate floor and talk for hours and hours and hours to “hold the floor” to maintain the filibuster. Needless to say, they didn’t do that very often.
The rules of the filibuster have changed a lot over the years. Significantly in 1917 the senate adopted a rule to allow a two-thirds majority to stop the debate therefore ending the filibuster so they could finally vote. Ending the filibuster back then required 67 Senate votes.
And then in 1975 the Senate reduced the number of required votes to just 60 to end the debate and shut down the filibuster. Later in the 1970’s senators started allowing bills that were facing a filibuster to be put aside while the chamber acted on other bills, they also became concerned that those long winded, sometimes melodramatic talking filibusters reflected poorly on the Senate. The tradition was changed and fast forward to today – Senators don’t have to talk the bill to death anymore – they just have to register their objections to indicate a filibuster. It’s basically a threat. That works every time.
Final votes: on the voting rights bill 50-50 (they needed 60 votes) 49-51 (ultimately Sen. Schumer changed his vote in order to preserve the right to bring the bill back up later)
And the vote to change the Senate rules failed 48-52 (they needed all 50 Democrats and Independents.)
