Biden Calls for Changing Senate Rules to “Protect Democracy”

The president of U.S, Joe Biden, for the first time supported a change in the rules of the Senate to be able to carry out laws that would combat the growing restrictions on voting approved at the state level in his country, believing that democracy is at stake.

“I’m tired of being quiet,” Biden said during a speech in Atlanta, Georgia, one of 19 states in the United States whose conservative leaders have approved changes to the electoral rules in the last year.

“Today I make it clear that, to protect our democracy, I support changing the Senate rules, in whatever way they have to be changed, to prevent a minority of senators from blocking measures on the right to vote,” he added.

A pulse with Trump and his allies

Biden thus took a further step in his complaint that the opposition in the Republican Party is preparing the ground to make it difficult to vote in the next electoral cycles and, potentially, turn around a result that does not favor them in the legislatures of this year and the presidential elections of 2024.

Former President Donald Trump (2017-2021), who holds the reins of the Republican Party, has convinced the majority of conservative voters that the 2020 elections were stolen from him and is using that power to push through “anti-voting laws” in the Conservative-controlled states, Biden warned.

“Republican legislators in several states have already announced plans to go further this year, to turn the will of the voters into a mere suggestion” in the November legislative elections, he stressed.

According to experts in the American voting system, some of the measures approved in conservative states increase the influence of partisan politicians in the electoral administration, which could facilitate a manipulation of the results at will.

And since the United States does not have a central electoral system, but each state sets its own rules for the elections, Democrats are concerned that if Trump or another Republican politician challenges the result of a vote again, it could be successful thanks to new state laws.

The Senate is “a caricature of what it was”

To prevent this, Democrats have promoted two federal bills that would counteract the effect of these state measures: the so-called “Freedom to Vote Act” and the “John Voting Rights Promotion Act. Lewis “.

However, the Republican opposition has so far managed to block the approval of these laws thanks to a maneuver known as “filibusterism”, which makes it possible to prevent the debate of any measure if a majority of 60 votes does not meet in the Senate.

Biden, who was a senator for more than three decades, had so far opposed the possibility that the Democrats would eliminate that maneuver to enforce their very narrow majority, which is only 50 seats, just half of the chamber.

However, he assured that the obstruction of the Republicans has left him “no other option” but to support that idea, since the United States Senate “has become a caricature of what it was.” “You have to let the majority prevail,” he stressed.

The alternative, according to US Vice President Kamala Harris – who spoke in Atlanta just before Biden – involves accepting that the entire United States “pay the price, for generations,” at the polls.

The difficult unity in the Democratic ranks

The idea of ​​Biden and the Democrats is to eliminate the use of “filibustering” only to be able to pass electoral reforms, without completely getting rid of that maneuver.

However, to pass that change they will need absolute unity in their ranks in the Senate, and at least two Democratic senators – the centrists Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema – have expressed doubts about the idea of ​​ending the “filibuster.”

In spite of everything, the Democratic leader in the Upper House, Chuck Schumer, has decided to accelerate the debate on the subject, and this Tuesday said that “as soon as tomorrow”, Wednesday, he will schedule a vote on the electoral reforms.

If Republicans block a vote on those measures, Schumer plans to launch a debate on the rule change before next Monday the 17th, with the aim of forcing all senators to position themselves on the issue.

Those plans have outraged Republicans, whose Senate leader Mitch McConnell accused Democrats on Tuesday of using “false hysteria” over state voting restrictions to “amass more power” and “permanently damage the institution” of the Upper House.

“If they try to break the Senate, we will make the voices (of the Republicans) heard in this chamber in ways that will be more inconvenient to the majority (Democrat) and the White House than anyone has ever seen in their life,” he threatened. McConnell in a speech in the plenary chamber.