Democracy is at Risk, but Stacey Abrams Has a Plan

It should concern is deeply that democracy is at risk with over 100 bills aimed at restricting voting getting filed and making their way through their state legislatures (see CNN report). As we know, the right to vote impacts lawmakers, lawmaking, and everything pertinent to a democracy. 

The formidable voting rights advocate, Stacey Abrams, has a plan and I hope it works.  Thanks to Dr. Bettina Love for sharing.

-Angela Valenzuela 

#votingrights #democracy #DemocracyVision #votingrightsforall #VotingRights #voting

Stacey Abrams Has a Plan to Dismantle the Filibuster and Protect Voting Rights

And she thinks it can get support from reluctant centrist Democrats.

by Ari Berman

Stacey Abrams speaks at campaign event for Rev. Raphael Warnock in Atlanta on November 3.Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images

Fight disinformation. Get the facts that matter. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter.

As Republicans in the Georgia state legislature passed a series of voting restrictions over the past 10 days, Stacey Abrams, the state’s leading voting rights activist, saw an ever more pressing need to reform the filibuster in the US Senate. And she has a plan for how to do it.

The Georgia legislation and the Senate rules might seem unrelated, but to Abrams, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee in 2018 and founder of the voting rights group Fair Fight Action, they’re directly connected. “Republicans are rolling back the clock on voting rights,” she says. “And the only way to head that off is to invoke the elections clause of the Constitution, which allows the Congress—and the Congress alone—to set the time, place and manner of elections at a federal level.”

The problem is that Republicans will surely use the filibuster to set an impossible 60-vote threshold for any such effort—and that two centrist Democratic senators, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, have said they oppose abolishing the filibuster. That’s why Abrams proposes tweaking it to allow major voting rights legislation to pass, and she thinks her plan can get reluctant Democrats on board. 

In the same way that Democrats can pass budget bills and confirm judges and Cabinet members with a simple majority, legislation protecting voting rights should also be exempt from the 60-vote requirement, Abrams says.  

“The judicial appointment exception, the Cabinet appointment exception, the budget reconciliation exception, are all grounded in this idea that these are constitutionally prescribed responsibilities that should not be thwarted by minority imposition,” she says. “And we should add to it the right to protect democracy. It is a foundational principle in our country. And it is an explicit role and responsibility accorded only to Congress in the elections clause in the Constitution.”

PODCAST

Listen to reporter Ari Berman interview Stacey Abrams, on this episode of the Mother Jones Podcast:

 

I spoke to Abrams on Monday, just hours before the Georgia Senate repealed no-excuse absentee voting, part of a series of bills passed in recent days to restrict voting rights that Abrams called “Jim Crow in a suit and tie.”

“This isn’t about retribution or revenge,” Abrams says. “This is about protection of the fundamentals of our nation.”

But neither bill will pass the Senate if Democrats don’t eliminate the filibuster, which Abrams calls “a racist procedural rule that is grounded in this notion that the minority must be protected unless we disagree with what the minority needs.”

Abrams testified before the House in late February in favor of HR 1, the most ambitious democracy reform billsince the Voting Rights Act, which would boost voting access through policies like automatic and Election Day registration, early voting, and expanded voting by mail. “It’s the reform we need that will provide protection, provide a foundational level of access, regardless of your geography,” she says. She also urged passage of another House proposal, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would require states with a history of discrimination to once again get federal approval for any changes to voting laws and procedures, after the Supreme Court struck down this requirement from the 1965 Voting Rights Act in 2013. The measure is needed, she says, “to make certain we don’t watch [voting rights] be butchered or eviscerated.”

I asked Abrams what she would say to Democrats like Manchin and Sinema to persuade them to go along with a “democracy exception” to the filibuster.

“This isn’t about retribution or revenge,” Abrams says. “This is about protection of the fundamentals of our nation, that if we do not protect the participation of voters in our election system, if we do not permit states to do what they must to protect their voters, then we will find ourselves losing our democratic values, losing our democracy. And so I would say to Democrats who are hesitant that short of completely revising the filibuster, we have to make certain that a minority of people cannot be in power in the Senate, and therefore deny the basic principles of citizenship to millions of Americans.”

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) has floated a similar idea, and an increasing number of Democratic senators are now expressing openness to eliminating the filibuster, especially for bills like HR 1. 

“I would get rid of the filibuster,” Amy Klobuchar, the chair of the Senate Rules Committee and a member of the Senate Democratic leadership, told me on March 3, when the House passed HR 1. “I have favored filibuster reform for a long time and now especially for this critical election bill.”

Manchin said on Sunday he’s open to changes to the filibuster, such as forcing Republicans to continuously occupy the Senate floor to block bills. And if Republicans keep passing restrictions on the right to vote, a proposal like Abrams’ could start to find a broader consensus.

Great opinion piece by Stacey Abrams largely on the need for political reform, including campaign finance, an overhaul of the Senate filibuster, addressing partisan gerrymandering, and "passing the For the People Act that would broaden voter access. Another reform is the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Protecting Our Democracy Act to reign in potential corruption by future presidents lest they see themselves, as Trump did, as above the law. 

-Angela Valenzuela

Opinion: Stacey Abrams: Our democracy faced a near-death experience. Here’s how to revive it.

Stacey Abrams, a Democrat, is a former minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives and founder of the group Fair Fight.

The violent Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, coupled with ongoing threats to election officials, election workers and lawmakers at all levels, represent unprecedented attacks on the foundations of our democracy. Certainly, President Donald Trump and others in his party who inspired the attacks must be held accountable through all available means. But accountability alone will not be nearly enough.

Only meaningful reforms can undo the damage done — and establish a government that is truly representative of the people. The next real test of our democracy comes now.

Make no mistake: Democracy may have survived this year, but President Biden and Vice President Harris were elected despite, not thanks to, weakened electoral systems. Together with the Democratic Congress, they now have the opportunity to implement reforms that reaffirm our nation’s promises that our country represents and works for everyone. We as Democrats must act before it is too late.

Our democratic system faces extraordinary threats today because of sustained attacks from Republican leaders who throw up roadblocks to voting and, among the worst actors, stoke the flames of white supremacy and hyper-nationalism to cling to power. There can be no clearer example than the covid-19 pandemic. The deaths of more than 450,000 people in the richest country in the world are symptomatic of a democracy in crisis and a political system that rewards cronyism over competence. Despite strong public support for the Centers for Disease Control’s work, the Affordable Care Act, and other economic justice and safety-net policies that could save lives, millions nevertheless continue to contract the disease without adequate access to health care.

No thinking person can deny that the communities of color disproportionately suffering and dying from this pandemic are also the people whose votes — and ability to hold failed leaders accountable — have been continuously suppressed.

The pandemic has been a collision of tragedy and corroded institutions, and the challenge is in how we respond. We can either engage in collective amnesia about what we have just lived through, and leave an unaccountable government in place, or we can rise to meet this moment by fixing the broken social compact. Defeating Trump was not enough. Meaningful progress on health care, racial justice and the economy requires aggressive action on voting rights, partisan gerrymandering and campaign finance.

One of the first steps must be an overhaul of the Senate filibuster, which has long been wielded as a cudgel against the needs of millions who struggle. Today, the parliamentary trick creates a more sinister threat to our nation: the ability of a minority of senators, who represent 41.5 million fewer people than the Senate majority, to block progress favored by most Americans.

Democrats in Congress must fully embrace their mandate to fast-track democracy reforms that give voters a fair fight, rather than allowing undemocratic systems to be used as tools and excuses to perpetuate that same system. This is a moment of both historic imperative and, with unified Democratic control of the White House and Congress, historic opportunity.

The agenda to restore democracy also includes passing the For the People Act to protect and expand voting rights, fight gerrymandering and reduce the influence of money in politics; the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore the full protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act; and the Protecting Our Democracy Act to constrain the corruption of future presidents who deem themselves above the law. These landmark bills have broad-based support, and would have passed long ago were it not for obstructionist leaders who fear losing their own influence if the American people have more power of their own.

Further, fixing our democracy requires we finally allow our fellow Americans in D.C. and Puerto Rico, the vast majority of whom are people of color, to have full access to our democracy. That means D.C. statehood and binding self-determination for Puerto Rico. In the District, as white extremist mobs destroyed the Capitol, murdered a police officer, and threatened the lives of elected officials and residents, Washingtonians were left defenseless because D.C. is not a state and its chief executive had no authority to deploy the National Guard.

Time is short. The forces standing against a democracy agenda seek to preserve and expand paths to power by shrinking the voting pool rather than winning voters over. In reaction to the historic turnout of 2020 and Democratic victories in places such as Georgia, already this year more than 100 bills have been put forward in state legislatures seeking to restrict voting access. Those efforts will not end without a fight.

We don’t know how many chances we will get to reverse our democracy’s near-death experience. We must not waste this one. We must go big — the future of democracy demands it.