Little in life comes without cost.
Too many steaks can lead to clogged arteries.
Too many runs can lead to ruined knees.
Too much sex— sorry to be a party pooper— can lead to unwanted pregnancies.
A simple act like dining out, during this pandemic, can lead to death.
Little comes without cost.
Now, that principle applies to politics: what cost should we bear to fortify our democracy against those who would weaken it?
We must ponder this predicament because under cover of phony and totally unsupported charges of election fraud— unsupported by virtually every court and every commission that looked last year— Republican legislators in most American states are attacking voting rights from every angle, to make it harder to vote, not easier. As if the Founding Fathers ever said that for all eternity, votes could only be cast by paper ballot. Or voting machine. As if they barred early voting, or mail-in ballots, or election day registrations, or drop-boxes convenient to citizens without cars.
They didn’t.
So, two things you need to know. One is, despite the egregious efforts of these legislators, three different constitutional amendments guarantee everyone’s right to vote. That right cannot be abridged. Not for race, not for gender, not for the color of your skin.
The other is, the election last year was verified by legal bodies at every level as the most honest in history. Turnout was historically high. Confirmable cases of fraud were historically low.
What this means is, this whole Republican campaign to constrict citizens’ voting rights is hogwash. Not to mention, a disgrace.
That’s why the House of Representatives this week passed a bill that would curtail contradictions between the various voting laws in our fifty states, and put some uniform punch behind the push to expand voting rights, not diminish them.
But in the House, it was easy. Democrats who would protect everyone’s right to vote needed only a simple majority. They got it.
The bill’s next stop is different.
In the Senate, they have an anachronistic rule called the filibuster. What it means in today’s terms is, if a single senator calls for a filibuster, the bill’s proponents will need not just a simple majority of senators to back it, but a super majority, meaning, 60% of them. With today’s evenly and bitterly divided Senate, that looks like an insurmountable bar.
To be fair, it’s not as if the filibuster is an unequivocal force for evil. From time to time, for both political parties in the past, the filibuster has served the noble purpose of its creation: preventing the tyranny of the majority.
But as often as not, it also has enabled an ignoble purpose: the tyranny of the minority. Over the years it was used to protect slavery, and into the 20th Century it was used to keep black Americans from voting (sound familiar?).
Consider this: there’s nothing sacred about the filibuster. It didn’t even come along until the 1800s. It’s not mentioned, let alone enshrined, in the Constitution. To the contrary, Alexander Hamilton warned against the adoption of super majority rule. If a simple majority could not govern, he wrote, it would lead to “contemptible compromises of the public good.”
There’s nothing sacred about it at all.
So the question widely debated today is, has it outlived its original purpose? Is the perpetuation of an archaic rule that enables a minority of senators to prevail more important than the preservation of laws that enable a majority of Americans to vote? (It’s worth pointing out, Democrats in the Senate might have only half the votes, but they actually represent in excess of 40 million more Americans than the Republicans.)
It’s not as if the elimination of the filibuster, in the long term, would permanently permit one party to persecute the other. Democrats have used the filibuster as much in the past to gum up the goals of Republicans as Republicans have used it to derail Democrats. At some point in American politics, the shoe is always on the other foot.
The debate isn’t about some short-term fix to some short-term issue. It is about a long-term fix for a preeminent American right: the right to vote. As important as they are, issues like immigration and taxation, health care and human rights, climate change and Covid relief are not what’s most in jeopardy if the minority wields the hammer of the filibuster. What’s most in jeopardy is a building block of our democracy: One Man, One Vote. Or to put it in the contemporary diction of the 21st Century, Every Man, Every Woman, One Vote. I’ve covered news in too many nations where voting rights and free elections don’t exist. That’s why I treasure them as I do.
So, preserve an oft-abused factional rule or preserve an oft-denied fundamental right? That’s not a hard call at all.
If the Democrats in the Senate vote to eliminate the filibuster despite the positive purpose it sometimes serves, yes, it does come with a cost. But little in life doesn’t. Given the stakes, it looks like a cost worth bearing.
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For almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks, a political columnist for The Denver Post, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies at home and international crises around the globe. He won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. Some of his essays also are published— with images— on BoomerCafe.com.
Good call Greg. HR1 is the most important piece of legislation since the civil rights legislation of the early sixties. All citizens, regardless of political leaning, need to insist that their senator support it. Surveys show solid majorities of voters on both sides support the voter protections, auto registration, campaign financing reforms, and anti-gerrymandering restrictions contained in this bill. If elected representatives fail to reflect the will of their constituents, vote them out. In the meantime, if Republicans continue to oppose HR1, our democracy is at risk. In that case, do away with the filibuster and pass the legislation. The Founders would certainly agree.
Mac Regan, Author of The 2020 American Revolution.
Another great, powerful, insightful article.
The preservation of our sacred voting rights is vital to our future as a democracy, and anathema to the anti-democratic, off-the-rails Republican Party. We must defend our republic by passing HR-1, filibuster be damned.