Delaware’s senior US Senator Tom Carper, a longtime ally of President Joe Biden, is supporting an elimination og the filibuster in order to pass voting rights legislation after Republicans again blocked it.
In a Thursday op-ed in his home-state paper, Carper noted that 19 Republican-controlled states have passed laws making voting more difficult while many GOP candidates and lawmakers embrace the “big lie” that widespread voter fraud occurred during the 2020 election.
“I’m an optimist by nature, so I want to hold out hope that a compromise can be reached,” wrote Carper. “But I cannot look the other way if total obstruction continues. I do not come to this decision lightly, but it has become clear to me that if the filibuster is standing in the way of protecting our democracy then the filibuster isn’t working for our democracy.”
On Wednesday, the Senate again attempted to pass voting rights legislation named after the late Rep. John Lewis and it again failed to clear the 60-vote legislative filibuster, with only one Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voting for it.
The filibuster is a decades-old Senate rule that was once rarely invoked, but has since become a routine part of Senate lawmaking. Good government groups say it impedes majority rule.
If all 50 senators who caucus with the Democrats voted to remove the filibuster and united around an agenda, they would be able to pass legislation with a simple majority and Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote.