Yet the most important Democrat to the fate of voting legislation didn’t even attend the meeting and thus wasn’t part of the discussion. Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) was in his home state, attending an event with first lady Jill Biden and actress Jennifer Garner — not huddled in a Capitol Hill conference room seeking a way forward.
Manchin is the only Senate Democrat not to have co-sponsored the bill, and he has expressed serious misgivings about the For the People Act — and, more generally, moving forward on any type of voting legislation without Republican buy-in….
Manchin said he instead supports an alternative — a refurbishment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 now known as the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, named after the late Georgia congressman and civil rights icon, that would reestablish Justice Department oversight over voting laws in jurisdictions with a history of discriminatory practices, including eight southern states plus Alaska..
Manchin, in fact, suggested he would extend the preemptive federal reviews, known as “preclearance,” to voting laws in all states and territories — a massive expansion of the landmark law that broke the back of Jim Crow.
But, according to interviews with lawmakers, it is no more likely that bill could pass an evenly divided Senate than the For the People Act. Manchin on Wednesday reiterated he is unwilling to overturn the filibuster, the Senate’s 60-vote supermajority rule, and key Republicans said they were uninterested in supporting the John Lewis legislation.