There is precedent for the Democratic Party’s plan to break the screen

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Democrats’ efforts to break opposition to passing a major voting rights bill were “a rule-breaking ploy.” “will not be “harmless” or “free,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday. based on ABC News.

But what exactly are Democrats proposing?

Senate rules state that 60 votes are needed to conclude debate on a bill – a procedure known as “cloture”. As long as the debates remain open, senators can sway, delay or even prevent the passage of the legislation in question.

However, the Senate also has the power to change its own rules at any time with a simple majority vote.

In this case, changing the rules could mean a one-time exception being limited to this particular measure — as Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va.) has suggested — or a rule change. The rule allows copying by 51 simple majority votes for all future voting rights measures. Lowering the split threshold in this way is called a “kernel option”.

It is unlikely to happen. Joe Manchin (DW.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) both opposed the rule change, leaving Democrats with just 48 votes.

However, if it happens, it will be the third use of “nuclear option” in Senate history.

The first was in 2013, when then Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) allows copying by simple majority “for all non-Supreme Court nominations.” This change helped Reid overcome the Republican films that were holding some of the nominations of President Barack Obama at the time, NY1 report.

At the time, McConnell threatened, “You’re going to regret this, and you might regret it a lot sooner than you think.”

McConnell made good on his word in 2017 when he expanded Reid’s engraving to include Supreme Court nominees. This ended what McConnell summon “first and last, partisan betrayal of a Supreme Court justice,” according to NPR. Democrats rejected Neil Gorsuch’s nomination after McConnell refused to hold confirmation hearings on Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland.