Following the failure of the latest voting rights bill, Democrats have a problem on their hands. This is the second major legislative failure in the past year under President Biden. In this latest bill, President Biden and the rest of the Democratic establishment pushed for new voting rights because of new voter laws coming out of Republican states. The goal of this bill was simple; to protect democracy. The issue: the bill addressed the wrong problem and never had a chance.
Contrary to popular belief, the real issue plaguing our democracy is not the voter ID bills coming out of Republican states but the loopholes that exist in our electoral college counting system.
Take the example of January 6th. This assault showed critical vulnerabilities in the system that could mark the end of American democracy as we know it. There were 8 Senators who did not vote for America when they chose to certify the election results. But what about next year. What happens to the country if we elect more pro totalitarian Senators? Or what happens if a rouge VP tries to throw out the results of a fair election? We have no laws to stop them. The counting of the electors was once a ceremonial and mundane process, now it could be the undoing of American democracy.
Look to the coordinated effort to forge electoral college certificates that we saw in 2020. In 8 states( Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin), Trump-affiliated allies sent in fake electoral college certificates to the National Archive to have them counted. This almost created a crisis, as such, it prompted then VP Mike Pence to change his script to address the possible issue the forged certificates could bring. We must create more robust laws to protect the vote in all 50 states and close the loopholes that threaten the very existence of democracy.
Joe Biden also made a critical mistake in promoting this bill. He wasted valuable political capital on a loser. This bill never had a shot of passing the Senate. In the process, however, Biden lost political capital that could have been used for other issues such as infrastructure or other pieces of his agenda. Biden, in this past year, has consistently overpromised and underdelivered. Biden doing this has cost him significantly in his approval rating, with 538 putting his most recent approval at 41.8 percent. What Biden needs to do is focus on political winners. He, at this point, can’t continue to go down this path of political failures. President Biden needs to refocus his efforts on saving democracy not by patching up ID laws but by fixing the loopholes in the Electoral College.