WATCH: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Senate would vote to change chamber's rule known as the filibuster by January 17, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, in order to enact voting rights legislation
Senator Joe Manchin told reporters that it was his "preference" to line up Republican support for a rule change that would allow Democrats to pass a voting rights bill on a party-line vote. That could spell doom for the legislation, which Republicans oppose.
Without Manchin's support, Senate Democrats would not be able to muster the simple majority necessary to alter the filibuster, which requires a 60-vote majority to pass most bills. The 100-seat Senate is split 50-50, with Democrats in charge only because Vice President Kamala Harris casts a tie-breaking vote.
Democrats say federal election reform is necessary to counter a wave of voting restrictions adopted last year by Republican-led states. The laws were inspired by Republican former President Donald Trump's false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election that he lost to Biden by a substantial margin.
"This is an excuse to try to break the Senate," McConnell told reporters. "This is genuine radicalism ... They want to make it easy to fundamentally change the country."
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