“Defenders of democracy in America still have a slim window of opportunity to act. But time is ticking away, and midnight is approaching,” according to more than 150 top scholars of U.S. democracy in a new push to temporarily suspend the Senate filibuster and pass voting rights protections on a simple majority vote.
Driving the news: Their unified front comes amid a short break in the legislative action on Capitol Hill, with the start of the Thanksgiving recess and after the House passage of President Biden’s “Build Back Better” social spending package…
What they’re saying: Those challenges shouldn’t distract from the urgency of passing the compromise Freedom to Vote Act before midterm elections begin, the group says in its public letter.
Written by scholars from Duke to Stanford universities, it touches on former President Trump’s “Big Lie” and some GOP efforts to empower political officials to overturn legitimate election results.
“The partisan politicization of what has long been trustworthy, non-partisan administration of elections represents a clear and present threat to the future of electoral democracy in the United States.”
Doing nothing would undermine free and fair elections and “likely result in an extended period of minority rule, which a majority of the country would reject as undemocratic and illegitimate,” the letter says.