Manchin Says ‘No’ on Democrats Election Overhaul — ‘Wrong Piece of Legislation’ to Unite the Country

Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) said on this week’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday” that the election reform so-called For The People Act was “the wrong piece of legislation” at this time to unite the country, and said that was why it did not have his support.

Partial transcript as follows:

WALLACE:  But let me ask you about another issue, voting rights. You’re the only Democrat in the Senate who is not supporting S-1, the so-called For the People Act.

MANCHIN:  Yes.

WALLACE:  Which would be a major voting reform bill. You say it’s too broad and too partisan. And, instead, you support basically a — a renewal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act which says that the feds get free clearance on any voting right changes in individual states, but you’d like it to apply to all 50 states, not just the states in the south that had a history of segregation. A couple of questions. One, is Chuck Schumer making a mistake in pushing this big bill, the For the People Act, and saying that he wants a vote on it by the end of the month? And, two, if he does bring it to the floor, will you vote against that bill?

MANCHIN:  Well, I’ve been pretty clear on that. I did an op-ed back home in West Virginia that came out today and laid out my — my concerns and my preference of what, you know, what I think would happen. You know, voting is the bedrock of our democracy. An open, fair, secured voting. We used to go around the world and explain and show and observe voting procedures in a democracy. And now if we can’t practice what we preach, and we’re going to basically do an overhaul, an 800 page overhaul of the voting rights or what we call For the People Act, I think there’s a lot of great things I agree in that piece of legislation but there’s an awful lot of things that basically don’t pertain directly to voting.So the Voting Rights Act, well now we’ve —

WALLACE:  So just to put a — a — a button on this, you will vote against that bill if it gets to the Senate floor?

MANCHIN:  I think it’s the wrong piece of legislation to bring our country together and unite our country and I’m not supporting that because I think it would divide us further. I don’t want to be in a country that’s divided any further than I’m in right now. I love my country and I think my Democrat and Republican colleagues feel the same. If we continue to divide it and separate us more, it’s not going to be united and it’s not going to be the country that we love and know and it’s going to be hard because it will be back and forth no matter who’s in power.

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