Tell Senator Feinstein: To Save Democracy, Kill the Filibuster

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My name is __________. I am a constituent, and my zip code is _______. I am a member of Indivisible SF.

To save democracy you must kill the filibuster. Our democracy is under attack by Republican voter-suppression and violent intimidation, by gerrymandering, and by outright subversion. Without swift and effective legislation such as the "For the People Act," the "John Lewis Voting Rights Act," and the DC Statehood bill, America's government of inclusive-democracy will become a sham. McConnell has made it clear that so long as he can wield the filibuster no voting-rights or democracy-preservation legislation will ever pass the Senate. To save democracy you must kill the filibuster.

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To save democracy you must kill the filibuster.

After the Trump regime's assaults, after Republican voter-suppression and election deceit, and after the violent January 6th mob attack on the Capitol, it's clear that our principle of fair representative government faces its gravest threat since the Civil War. Without swift and effective legislation such as the "For the People Act," the "John Lewis Voting Rights Act," and the DC Statehood bill, American inclusive-democracy will be crushed by Republican voter-suppression and intimidation, by gerrymandering, by election-fraud, and by outright subversion. McConnell and the Republican Party have made it clear that so long as they can wield the filibuster no voting-rights or democracy-preservation legislation will ever pass the Senate.

To save democracy you must kill the filibuster.

State by state -- thirty-three so far -- Republicans are subverting and rigging democratic elections in order to obtain political power against the will of the majority. They've already proposed more than 165 new laws to restrict voting rights, filed numerous lawsuits, and issued executive actions to suppress voting by nonwhites, students, urbanites, the poor, and others who don't favor the GOP. In Georgia, for example, Republicans are enacting a flood of new laws designed to force inner-city voters to wait in hours-long voting lines. And then, to add insult to injury, they are making it a crime for anyone to provide those voters with food, shade, water, or other forms of support.

To save democracy you must kill the filibuster.

Once upon a time the filibuster gave Democrats and the values they stand for some protection when they were in the Senate minority. But Republicans have now made it clear that they will not hesitate to eliminate any portion of the filibuster that impedes their unrestrained exercise of power to impose their unpopular agenda on the American people.

Background

The filibuster requires that a bill has to have a super-majority of 60 votes in order to pass rather than the simple majority that House bills require. The filibuster was never part of the Constitution. It was created by accident when the Senate revised its rules in 1805 and inadvertently eliminated the procedures for ending debate and forcing a vote on the matter at hand. No one realized the filibuster existed or tried to use for more than 30 years -- until southern senators discovered its power to block legislation that might limit slavery. After the Civil War it was used to preserve Jim Crow segregation, deny voting rights to nonwhites, block economic justice and environmental protection measures, and retain the Electoral College. Not only has legislation been blocked, but for more than a century the threat of a filibuster has intimidated progressives into watering-down, or abandoning entirely, social-justice and economic fairness proposals.

Over the years, the filibuster rule has been amended and revised, but it has always remained as an effective weapon that those in power could use to block, delay, or weaken expansion of civil and voting rights, corporate regulation, and environment protection. Where once Senate filibusters were rare, now they are so routine and common that almost every piece of legislation is subject to the filibuster's 60-vote super-majority. But through use of the ‘Nuclear Option” parliamentary maneuver, the filibuster rule can be revoked or altered by a simple majority of senators voting -- if the Democratic majority hang together and have the political will and the political courage to stand up and do what’s right

For more than two decades, Republicans have been trying to suppress and restrict the voting rights of nonwhites, students, urbanites, the poor, and others who don't favor the GOP. In 2002, Bush defeated Gore by 537 votes in Florida after the Republican governor – Bush's brother – unfairly purged 50,000 Black voters from the rolls. In 2013, the five Republican members of the Supreme Court overturned a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and by doing so enabled a massive increase in voter-suppression across the southern states. It was voter suppression in key states that gave Trump his victory in 2016, and it was high Democratic turnout in spite of Republican voter suppression that provided the margin of Biden's win last November.

Furious at Trump's defeat at the polls, Republicans are now mounting an unprecedented tsunami of voter-suppression and ballot-restriction laws designed to hinder and reduce Democratic voters. As of the beginning of this month, they've introduced more than 165 anti-democratic, anti-voting-rights laws (with more to come) in 33 different states that represent a clear majority in the Electoral College. Instead of voters choosing who governs them, the Republican goal is to flip the system so that it’s politicians who choose who gets to vote.

The only way to counter this Republican attack on electoral-democracy is through national legislation such as the the "For the People Act," the "John Lewis Voting Rights Act," and the DC Statehood bill, but Senate Republicans are determined to filibuster against any, all, and every democracy bill. Which is why the filibuster must be killed to save democracy.