Friday, June 30, 2006
Voting Rights Act Stalled in the House
It seems that the House of Representatives allows a kind of "filibuster" to block legislation. That is, a minority of the members of the House can stop the introduction of a bill to be voted on by the whole membership. The device is a practice of the Republican Speaker, who will not let a measure come before the House unless it has the support of a majority of the Republicans.
I don't remember the numbers of Republicans and Democrats in the House, but I have read that the Democrats need to replace 15 Republicans with Democrats to take control. My calculation shows that at present there are 232 Republicans and 203 Democrats. The Speaker's rule allows a majority of the 232 Republicans to block any piece of legislation. Thus, 117 Republican members can stop any bill from reaching the floor for a vote. In an extreme case, these 117 hold-outs could thwart the combined will of all the rest of the members, all 318 of them.
There are those who complain about the filibuster rule in the Senate. Forty-one Senators (out of 100 total) can prevent a measure from coming to a vote by talking it to death. At least the Senate rule is well-known and the results are visible to all. The House rule is something that the Speaker and the Republican caucus impose. It is not well-known.
The voting rights act, set to expire this year, was set for reenactment. Everyone seemed to be in favor: the President, the Speaker, the Vice President, the Majority and Minority Leaders in the House and the Senate. Then a group of Republicans decided to block passage by employing the rule of the majority of the majority. Evidently at least 117 Republican members of the House decided that they didn't like the voting rights act. One of them has proposed amending the act to delete such requirements as publishing voting information and printing ballots in other languages besides English, in requiring States who at one time had a record of preventing Blacks from voting to submit any changes in their election laws to the US Department of Justice, and the like.
I don't know what makes me more angry: the ability of a minority in the House to block popular legislation or the xenophobic objections of a person who wants to deny voting privileges to any citizen who's not fluent in English. It has occurred to me that many Republicans must believe that foreign-born citizens who are weak in English are very likely to vote Democratic.
I don't remember the numbers of Republicans and Democrats in the House, but I have read that the Democrats need to replace 15 Republicans with Democrats to take control. My calculation shows that at present there are 232 Republicans and 203 Democrats. The Speaker's rule allows a majority of the 232 Republicans to block any piece of legislation. Thus, 117 Republican members can stop any bill from reaching the floor for a vote. In an extreme case, these 117 hold-outs could thwart the combined will of all the rest of the members, all 318 of them.
There are those who complain about the filibuster rule in the Senate. Forty-one Senators (out of 100 total) can prevent a measure from coming to a vote by talking it to death. At least the Senate rule is well-known and the results are visible to all. The House rule is something that the Speaker and the Republican caucus impose. It is not well-known.
The voting rights act, set to expire this year, was set for reenactment. Everyone seemed to be in favor: the President, the Speaker, the Vice President, the Majority and Minority Leaders in the House and the Senate. Then a group of Republicans decided to block passage by employing the rule of the majority of the majority. Evidently at least 117 Republican members of the House decided that they didn't like the voting rights act. One of them has proposed amending the act to delete such requirements as publishing voting information and printing ballots in other languages besides English, in requiring States who at one time had a record of preventing Blacks from voting to submit any changes in their election laws to the US Department of Justice, and the like.
I don't know what makes me more angry: the ability of a minority in the House to block popular legislation or the xenophobic objections of a person who wants to deny voting privileges to any citizen who's not fluent in English. It has occurred to me that many Republicans must believe that foreign-born citizens who are weak in English are very likely to vote Democratic.
