Washington (AFP) - The US Senate was set to vote Wednesday on a seemingly futile push to shore up voting rights as Republican-led states introduce a raft of restrictions that Democrats say has hit racial minorities hardest.
The Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act passed the House of Representatives last week but are all but guaranteed to fail in the upper chamber, with Republicans united in opposition to what they frame as a partisan power grab.
Democrats and voting rights activists have championed the measures as a necessary response to Republican efforts to restrict voting, especially among Black and Latino Americans.
"I know this is not 1965. That's what makes me so outraged. It's 2022, and they're blatantly removing more polling places from the counties where Blacks and Latinos are overrepresented," New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker said on the floor of the Senate.
"I'm not making that up. That is a fact."
Conservative states spent the last year leveraging ex-president Donald Trump's false claims of widespread election fraud to introduce a slate of regulations that make voting more difficult.
The legislation would guarantee the right to mail-in voting, ballot drop boxes and at least two weeks of early voting -- and making Election Day a national holiday.
It also addresses "gerrymandering" -- the partisan trick of redrawing congressional districts in the ruling party's favor -- and would require states with a history of voter discrimination to get clearance before changing election law.
Republicans say restrictions such as limiting mail-in voting and insisting on voter identification are simply common sense.
Democrats struggle
"The concern is misplaced. If you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high percentage as America," Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters.
"In a recent survey 94 percent of Americans thought it was easy to vote. This is not a problem. Turnout is up, the biggest turnout since 1900."
Democrats hold a technical majority of one in the evenly split Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris able to act as a tiebreaker on 50-50 votes.
With no Republicans likely to break ranks, Democrats will be unable to overcome the so-called "filibuster" -- the 60-vote threshold required to move forward with legislation in the Senate.
After the vote fails, Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will then try to lower the bar to break filibusters specifically for voting rights, a gambit known as the "nuclear option."
Schumer has proposed reinstating the "talking filibuster," forcing Republicans to speak on the floor to sustain their opposition, and introducing a limited carve-out exemption from the 60-vote threshold.
But this maneuver will also likely fall short, as moderate Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have indicated they will side with Republicans to vote no.
"The eyes of history are upon us... Win, lose or draw, we are going to vote, especially when the issue relates to the beating heart of our democracy," Schumer told his fellow senators.
