Grace Segers, The New Republic

The pitfalls of being the nominal majority party in an evenly divided Senate were reinforced last week, when Democrats failed to enact two voting rights measures without Republican support and then were unable to muster the votes to change the rules to allow the legislation to pass with a simple majority. Although all 50 Democrats supported the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, only 48 voted to weaken the filibuster, meaning that the bills were still subject to the 60-vote threshold to advance and therefore unable to move forward without Republican support.

Courtland Milloy, The Washington Post

“Where do we go from here?” I’ve been hearing that question quite a bit since federal voting rights legislation was defeated last week.

Larry Diamond, The New York Times (Opinion)

Like many scholars of democracy, I have strongly supported both the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. Both are necessary (though not sufficient) to secure the most precious rights in any democracy — the right to vote and the right to have one’s vote counted fairly and accurately.