House passes John Lewis’ voting rights bill expected to stagnate in Senate

“The old battles have indeed become new again,” she said. “While literacy tests and voting taxes no longer exist, some states and local jurisdictions have passed laws that are modern barriers to voting. As long as voter suppression exists, the need for comprehensive protections against [Voting Rights Act] continue to.”

The bill was adopted by 219-212 votes.

He is unlikely to make further progress in the Senate, where legislative obstruction remains intact despite a gradual push for changes that would weaken the chamber’s qualified majority requirement to pass most bills. Senatorial Minority Leader Mitch McConnell questioned the need for the proposal, arguing that the Supreme Court had only eliminated the preclearance formula determining which jurisdictions need federal approval to make substantial changes to lawsuits. electoral laws – not the voting rights protections themselves.

Lawyers, on the other hand, say voting protections are toothless without this preclearance formula.

Bill named Lewis has only one GOP sponsor in the Senate, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Illinois Representative Rodney Davis, the top Republican on the House panel that oversees the federal election, denounced the legislation as a “federal takeover” of the elections and a “partisan takeover.”

The Congressional Black Caucus and other leading Democrats had been pushing for consideration of the bill before the fall. Democratic lawmakers and staff have worked for months to craft a new formula for preclearance that they believe could survive judicial scrutiny if the bill were ever enacted and challenged in court. The bill also deals with a July Supreme Court ruling that could make it more difficult to challenge election laws.

Majority House Whip Jim Clyburn was in tears during a closed-door Democrats meeting on Tuesday morning as he spoke about legislation and his parents’ experiences of electoral discrimination, according to a member in the room.

Democrats and supporters alike see the bill named by Lewis as one of their last opportunities to circumvent laws restricting voting access that many states passed in the aftermath of the 2020 election. But they struggled to chart a course forward after the obstruction of the elections and the ethics bill and a handful of senators have resisted the abolition of the procedural roadblock.

Sarah Ferris contributed to this report.