Carper Announces Support for Eliminating Filibuster to Advance Voting Rights Legislation

Carper: “No barrier – not even the filibuster – should stand in the way of our sacred obligation to protect our democracy.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Tom Carper (D-Del.) today announced his support for eliminating the Senate filibuster on voting rights legislation after Senate Republicans used the filibuster to block passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Carper wrote an op-ed explaining his position in The News Journal, published online and in print Thursday morning, and issued the following statement:

“The Voting Rights Act of 1965 gained increasingly bipartisan support in my lifetime — including most recently in 2006, when the vote was 98-0 in the Senate. I’m an optimist by nature, so I want to hold out hope that we can reach a bipartisan compromise on voting rights legislation. And while I am heartened by Senator Murkowski’s support for the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, I cannot look the other way if total obstruction continues as it did yesterday with this bipartisan legislation.

“I do not come to this decision lightly, but it has become clear to me that if the filibuster is standing in the way of protecting our democracy then the filibuster isn’t working for our democracy.

“Earlier this year, my friend Senator Angus King, an Independent from Maine, wrote that ‘if forced to choose between a Senate rule and democracy itself, I know where I will come down.’ And so do I.

“No barrier – not even the filibuster – should stand in the way of our sacred obligation to protect our democracy.” 

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