Why We Need to Eliminate the Filibuster

It’s designed to protect white political power.

The Senate was created to boost small conservative states and serve as a check on the more democratic House of Representatives, while the Electoral College prevents the direct election of the president, challenging the idea of a representative government.

In the past decade, the GOP has dropped any pretense of trying to appeal to a majority of Americans. Instead, they are relying on the structure of America’s political institutions, which diminish the influence of urban areas, young Americans, and voters of color. This stronghold of conservative Whites is drastically over represented in the Electoral College, the Senate, and gerrymandered legislative districts. GOP senators from 21 small states represent less than a quarter of our population, yet they threaten the future of American democracy.

Even though Democrats have a slim majority in the Senate, progressive legislation can be blocked by GOP Senators use of the filibuster. The filibuster was widely used by Southern segregationists after Reconstruction to stop civil rights laws. It remains a key tool used to thwart progressive legislation supported by a clear majority of Americans by requiring 60 votes to pass bills. After the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, bipartisan legislation requiring background checks for gun sales was supported by 86 percent of Americans but blocked by the Senate.

“In the 87 years between the end of Reconstruction and 1964, the only bills that were stopped by filibusters were civil rights bills,” writes Adam Jentleson, a former staffer for Harry Reid, in his new book, The Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy. Unless Democrats get rid of what President Barack Obama has called a “Jim Crow relic,” the GOP can use the filibuster to block legislation that would expand democratic participation and help reverse minority rule, such as bills recently passed by the House to restore the Voting Rights Act and make it easier to vote.

The only way to reverse this conservative hold on our government is through major structural reform, like abolishing the Electoral College, eliminating the filibuster, ending partisan gerrymandering, ensuring all American’s have a fundamental right to vote, and giving statehood to Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico to make the Senate more reflective of the country.

Read more at www.motherjones.com