Sinema: Eliminating Filibuster Could Result in ‘Negative Restrictions on Voting Rights in the Future’

Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) warned Friday on ABC’s “The View” that eliminating the filibuster could result in “very negative restrictions on voting rights in the future.”

Co-host Joy Behar said, “I think that voting rights are too crucial to just say, ‘Well, we need to keep it for when we need it.’ It’s too important because if we don’t have— if everyone in the country is not able to vote, you don’t really have a country. Not only won’t you have the filibuster, you won’t have a country. So for me, it seems like it’s an emergency right now that we get rid of the filibuster even though we might pay down the road. If we don’t have voting rights, what do we got? Nothing.”

Sinema said, “You know, Joy, I’m really glad that you followed up on this point. So I mentioned this in my op-ed in The Washington Post. If we were to eliminate the filibuster or create a so-called exception, which actually doesn’t exist to you would have to limit the and filibuster in order to pass voting rights legislation — which just as a quick reminder, I’m a co-sponsor of that legislation, and I voted to support and advance it, continue to do so. If you eliminate the filibuster to pass that piece of legislation, then in four years or any time when the other party gains control, without the filibuster in place, all of those voting rights protections could be easily wiped out with a simple majority vote.”

She continued, “You could have a nationwide ban on mail-in voting. You could have requirements for voter I.D. at every level of government for every election throughout the country. So the thing to remember, and I know this can be really hard to do when we’re feeling really worried about what’s coming right in front of us, is to think a couple of years down the road on what it looks like if you remove this tool, this protection for the minority, what happens when you are the minority and that tool is no longer there to protect your rights? So the sense of urgency I think many of us share in wanting to protect voting rights, and we’re all working to do this across the country, but eliminating this tool would result in very negative restrictions on voting rights in the future. So thinking about this from the long-term rather than the just right now term, I think, is really important. It’s the way that I’m viewing this discussion.”

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