(My personal site is currently down, and I have some sysadmin work to do which is being tricky, it will hopefully be up this weekend, but I needed to write this out, and this still exists.)
The John Lewis Voting Rights Act is dead. It was killed today by that most peculiar of institutions, the filibuster. While Chuck Schumer could potentially bring it back up with his strategic no vote, unless if we get both Sinema and Manchin on board to kill the filibuster, it is unlikely the John Lewis Voting Rights Act will pass this session.
This means that the crystal ball for the 2022 midterms needs to be updated immediately.
The 2016 elections saw Democrats pick up 2 seats. Democrats have since picked up two more seats which were up in that cycle, with Mark Kelly in Arizona and Raphael Warnock Georgia. Both of them won in narrow elections. Nine races had a margin of victory under 10%, in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Missouri, Wisconsin, Colorado, North Carolina, Florida, and Indiana.
The Brennan Center reports that 19 states enacted 33 laws which make it harder to vote, and 25 states enacted 62 laws which make it easier to vote.
Blue states have expanded voting rights, red states have restricted voting rights, purple states have done both, grey states haven't passed any according to the Brennan Center.
Combining this map with the map for current Senate seats which are up in 2022 gives us this map:
dark blue: Democrat is up, voting rights are expanded
blue: Democrat is up, no change or both directions
light blue: Democrat is up, voting rights are restricted
dark red: Republican is up, voting rights are restricted
red: Republican is up, no change or both directions
light red: Republican is up, voting rights are expanded
grey: No seat is up.
This map is super messy... so first we have to define our question. I want to know which states are up next year, which are currently held by Republicans, which haven't seen new voter disenfranchisement laws, and the Republican won with fewer than 10% of the votes last time it was up. Likewise, I want to know which seats are likely R pickups, which have seen a reduction in voting rights, and which Democrats won with a margin of less than 10%. We can be fairly confident at this point in time these seats will be lost without substantial organizing.
We are probably going to lose both Senator Mark Kelly and Senator Raphael Warnock next year, if we then pick up both Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, we will then have 46 Democrats who support abolition of the Filibuster, 50 Republicans, 2 Independents who caucus with Democrats and support filibuster abolition, and 2 Dixiecrats who support the filibuster. This would not change the status quo where we have 48 abolitionists and 52 who support the peculiar institution of the Filibuster.
The only potentially realistic path in this world which isn't from the depths of crazy land is for the Democratic Party to gain enough votes in the Senate in 2022 where we are not going to see the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is to flip all four states I highlighted in blue on the map above. this will give us 48 Democrats, 48 Republicans, 2 independents, and 2 Dixiecrats.
Missouri has a Republican trifecta, and if we start focusing on campaigning there, they will pass voter discrimination laws.
But this leaves out a very very big hole in my analysis, which is no excuse mail in voting. When you look at the actual list of new restrictive laws which are being proposed right now, Georgia has 4 new laws which make it harder to do absentee voting. This is going to make efforts to convince voters to use absentee voting less effective. Arizona is making it harder to stay on absentee voting lists and has stricter signature requirements, which make absentee GOTV efforts less efficient than they were in the past. So I didn't actually leave it out, because it's irrelevant.
This means the best possible realistic scenario is flipping North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania while losing Arizona and Georgia. This gives us 47 Democrats, 49 Republicans, 2 independents, and 2 Dixiecrats.
Also known as a de facto minority as our best possible realistic scenario.
There is no path to passing significant legislation without filibuster reform. Anyone telling you otherwise doesn't understand American government.
There is no realistic path in this world to picking up a net of two seats in the 2022 midterms without the John Lewis Voting Rights Act looking at these factors alone.
References:
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-october-2021
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