Washington, D.C. — Today, in The Washington Post, John Podesta—founder and chair of the board of directors for the Center for American Progress—joined Wade Henderson, interim president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, to call for reform of the filibuster to ensure Americans’ right to vote is protected:
Try explaining to a Black grandmother raised under Jim Crow why it takes only 50 votes in the Senate to stack the Supreme Court with justices who are undermining her voting rights, but 60 votes to pass a bill protecting them. Or better yet, ask her to tell you about her life 60 years ago, and how the law was used to keep her from accessing education, jobs and the ballot box …
… With goodwill and comity exhausted, and against the backdrop of states determined to disenfranchise their own citizens, we now support broad reform of the filibuster to allow a majority vote on many of the other most pressing issues for American families. Creating a more limited carveout would likely just encourage a future Republican majority to shrink the filibuster’s scope further.
Yet, with the future of our democracy hanging in the balance, we believe the Senate must do whatever it takes, be it broad reform or a narrow exception, to safeguard our elections and democratic process for all Americans, just as it did nearly six decades ago. We must make it easier to vote — not harder — for both our citizens and senators alike.
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