this with a majority vote. they can pass it with 50 democratic votes. i feel like the coverage of that is often sort of black and white. light switch on and off, you re either gonna have the filibuster or not. it does seem like if this is gonna happen the more likely outcome is kind of more of a dimmer switch and then an on and off light switch. they could find a way to strengthen the filibuster or reform the filibuster or alter the filibuster or have some sort of carved out for the filibuster. in a way that they ve done on nominations, judicial nominations and other things in the past, specifically to protect voting rights. do you think that is the way that this will likely go if it does go forward? but they ll find a narrow path to doing this? i think that s exactly right. they re going to debate how to input the strength of the filibuster in order to have this vote and i think there s a lot of ways to skin this cat, rachel. we ve seen proposals to lower the voting threshold from 6
democracy bells and there are a lot of ways you can make commitments. it s not really black or white right now but ultimately the guide for whether or not this reforming the filibuster will work is, does the majority does the senate majority have the ability to call an upper down vote on a piece of legislation? or does mitch mcconnell and the senate minority have the ability to either straight-up veto as they re going to do tomorrow or do they have the ability to delay for months and months and effectively veto? so with just a 50 democratic votes has the ability to change that rule. they contagious whatever they want and over the course of the 4th of july recess we don t need to get into the weeds of is it this reformer that reform? what we re calling for is american democracy to continue functioning. we re calling for voting rights reform that is widely popular that 70, or 80% of americans in some states support. so for you going out your senators town hall or your senators congress
hot sun on lines to vote. what does that have to do with voter fraud? it has to do with cruelty. it has to do with nastiness. and it has to do with suppressing the vote. removing student i.d.s from the list of valid forms of identification, that s election integrity? we know what you re doing. you don t students to vote. yeah don t let students vote. turn him off the whole process and make america even more delaying the hours of sunday voting until the evening which coincidentally are not so coincidentally by these republican legislators makes it harder for black churchgoers to participate in voter drives after sunday services. how despicable. does that sound like gym crow and republican colleagues? it sure does to a lot of us.
who tend to vote democratic. black americans, communities of color. native american tribes and college students and this really is horrific. this is pre-1965. this is undermining the most fundamental vision of citizens participating in their democracy. it is shameful and i would hope that a number of colleagues would like to vote to say yes, we should have this bill on the floor but they re facing the intense power politics of mitch mcconnell and they re belting under that pressure. senator jeff merkley the lead sponsor of the for the people act getting that first key vote tomorrow afternoon in the senate. good luck we have to have you back soon to talk about next steps once we see what happens in that important vote tomorrow thank you. thank you very much rachel. all right we ve got more ahead, stay with us. with us. i got you. all by yourself.
what do you think is gonna happen tomorrow? i think we re going to see us get off to the races tomorrow. when we are not heading towards a break while we re heading towards a speed bump but this is all part of the plan so we ve got to put tomorrow and context. there are several steps to this piece of legislation coming up. first the for the people act as it passed the house. they did that. then they have to go to the senate and go through the process and go through markup and go through we ve done all that. now the next step in this process is we have to debate whether there will be a debate. that is with the voters tomorrow. the vote tomorrow is not on the for the people act. the vote is whether or not the senate should consider the for the people act and this is what we re pretty darn sure is going to happen. mitch mcconnell and the entirety of the republican caucus is going to say no. we don t want a debate for voting rights. we do not want to debate voting rights. despite the a