Democrats’ voting rights agenda checks off advocates’ boxes and they’re ‘holding out hope’ it’ll break through the filibuster impasse

• Senate Democrats are proposing bills that check many advocates' boxes on voting rights.
• But keeping voting rights alive will face hurdles from scheduling to a broader debate over the filibuster.
• Sen. Joe Manchin, a key moderate working on the issue, opposes reforming the filibuster to pass the bills.
• See more stories on Insider's business page.

WASHINGTON, D.C.-Senate Democrats have an ambitious voting rights agenda that checks off many advocates' and scholars' boxes. But it'll run up against opposition from two of its key members to changing the filibuster rules to pass it.

Over a month after Senate Republicans filibustered the For the People Act, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer could bring up a new version of their flagship voting rights and democracy reform bill up for a vote as soon as next week, the Washington Post and Politico reported Thursday.

A group of Democrats led by Rules Committee Chair Sen. Amy Klobuchar including Sens. Joe Manchin, Jeff Merkley, Alex Padilla, Raphael Warnock, and Jon Ossoff, have been working on a revamped, more narrowly tailored version of the legislation.

The previous iteration of the jam-packed legislation, largely written in 2018 and 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic, had sweeping mandates and deadlines criticized by election officials.

Some scholars also critiqued it for not addressing the growing threat of partisan interference in election administration and meddling with election results, dubbed "election subversion."

Leading election law scholar Rick Hasen wrote in mid-June, for example, that "the biggest problem" with Manchin's proposed version of the bill "is its failure to address the danger of election subversion."

The revised version of The For the People Act is expected to be slimmed down, focus on voting rights, and take on subversion. It could be modeled after Manchin's earlier compromise proposal, which includes national voter ID standards, 15 days of early voting, automatic voter registration, and a ban on partisan gerrymandering.

Other bills proposed by those senators in the past few weeks specifically address subversion concerns, including legislation that establishes an affirmative right to vote in federal law, legislation that would prevent local officials from being removed without cause and make harassment of election officials a federal crime, and another newly-introduced bill that would establish stricter federal standards to protect the integrity and chain-of-custody of federal election materials from outside interference.

Senate Democrats are on a time crunch trying to maintain momentum.

It's unclear which elements of the later three proposals would be rolled into the revised version of S.1. Klobuchar has been publicly optimistic about the deal, but Democratic senators have so far been tight-lipped on details.

"These conversations are ongoing and very positive," Ossoff told Insider on Thursday evening, declining to comment on which measures are likely to come up for a vote and when.

The Senate is already on track to lose the first week of its August recess to finishing up passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill and advancing a budget resolution, including a grueling vote-a-rama. It's unclear so far when voting legislation would fit into the schedule with senators aiming to get out of town as soon as they can.

But in addition to the scheduling questions, Senate Democrats are running up against a more fundamental debate over the filibuster, one that will determine the fate of any legislation.

In the House too, two key committees are wrapping up their work compiling the legislative record required for the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore the preclearance component of the Voting Rights Act that hasn't been in effect since the Supreme Court's 2013 decision in Shelby v. Holder.

Rep. G.K. Butterfield, chair of the House Administration Subcommittee on Elections, told reporters on Friday morning that he expects the final legislative text by the end of August.

Manchin, a strong supporter of the Voting Rights Act restoration, has maintained he wants it to be bipartisan. Just one of his GOP colleagues, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, publicly supports it so far.

Butterfield praised Manchin's work in particular and told Insider he was "prayerful" that the West Virginia senator could either convince 10 Republican colleagues to sign on to H.R. 4, and if not, back a change to the current filibuster rules that require 60 votes to pass most legislation, a major obstacle in a chamber divided between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans.

"It's been done before," Butterfield said.

But Manchin cited those previous reforms in a Sunday interview on CNN in explaining his opposition to more changes. He warned that the Senate lowering the filibuster threshold from 60 votes to 51 for some executive branch and judicial nominees under then-Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid came back to bite Democrats later on.

"I can't imagine a carveout because I was here in 2013 when it was a carevout...2017, Mitch McConnell's in control, and guess what, that carveout worked to carve us up pretty bad..so there's no stopping it," he said, adding the filibuster "makes us work together."

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, another key moderate, explained her opposition to a voting rights exception in a Wednesday interview on ABC's "The View," urging advocates to think about the long-term consequences for when Democrats, who only narrowly control the Senate because of VP Kamala Harris, find themselves out of power.

"In four years or any time when the other party gains control, without the filibuster in place, all those voting rights protections could be wiped out with a simple majority vote," she said. "You could have a nationwide ban on mail-in voting. You could have nationwide requirements for voter ID at every level of government."

But Butterfield told Insider that he's "holding out hope" that no filibuster reform will be needed and that 10 Republican Senators will "embrace" the legislation named for John Lewis - with lots of persuasion from Manchin.

"Hope springs eternal, and that's where I am on this," he said.