WASHINGTON (Nexstar) — The U.S. Senate failed to pass voting rights legislation, delivering a huge blow to Democrats — but not an unexpected one.
Despite failing to pass the legislation several times now, Democrats have vowed not to give up.
“Senate democrats fighting for voting rights is not over,” said Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
After another failure to advance federal voting rights legislation, Democrats could decide to break up the legislation into individual bills. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) says there are provisions he strongly favors.
“Vote-by-mail started off in Oregon and started off bipartisan,” Wyden said.
Since the 2020 election, dozens of states passed or are trying to pass laws that Democrats say restrict voting.
“We were making a lot of progress until Donald Trump came along and started spewing lies about vote-by-mail,” Wyden added.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) countered by claiming Democrats are lying about voting laws in Republican-controlled states.
“They should not engage in a similar lie that Republicans across the country are making it much harder for minorities to vote,” Romney said.
Earlier this week, Romney said Democrats should focus on working with Republicans on what he sees as the real threat to elections.
“That is the corruption of the counting of the ballots, the certification of elections, and the congressional provisions for accepting and counting a slate of electors,” he said.
Romney and other Republicans appear open to reforming the Electoral Count Act of 1887 to make it harder to overturn the results of future elections.
Democrats, including the White House, support the bill.
“We just have always wanted to be clear that it was not a substitute for voting rights legislation,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said.
But some Democrats say that point is moot if voting is unfairly restricted and they will keep pushing to increase access to the ballot.
“The fact is that if people can’t vote initially, you don’t even get to that stage,” Wyden said.