大约12名德州民主党人逃离他们的州来到华盛顿，周四在国会山地下室会见了在国会拥有投票权立法关键选票的参议院民主党人，西弗吉尼亚州的乔·曼钦。
但显然，曼钦为参议院阻挠投票规则破例的话题从未被提及。
在长达一小时的会议后，曼钦告诉记者，“这是一次非常好的会议。这是一次信息非常丰富的会议，基本上，我们都达成了一个共识，那就是我们想要的基本上是保护投票权。就这样。有护栏的投票权法案。仅此而已。”
这位中间派民主党参议员拒绝支持阻挠议事规则的例外情况，该规则要求参议院以50票对50票通过大多数立法。他说，许多投票权活动人士推动的热门话题甚至没有得到讨论。
“阻挠议事不需要(发生)，”曼钦在会后坚持说，“不应该有民主党人或共和党人不会或不能或不应该投票给真正只涉及投票和选民权利的东西。”
后来，德克萨斯州民主党人向记者证实，阻挠议事确实没有被提及，称这是故意的。
“我认为已经有足够多的人与乔·曼钦讨论了阻挠议事的问题。那是坐在房间里的大象。每个人都知道交易是什么，”埃尔帕索州众议员乔·穆迪说，他现在是德克萨斯州众议院前临时议长，此前共和党人投票剥夺了他的这一头衔。
会议召开的前一天，美国总统拜登发表了热情洋溢的讲话，称共和党限制投票权的努力是“对民主的攻击”，但没有提到曼钦或参议院阻挠议事规则。
曼钦说，他正在进行立法工作，但不清楚这是一项新的努力，还是旨在恢复和更新20世纪60年代司法部“预先批准”程序的《约翰·刘易斯投票权法案》，该程序保护少数民族免受有歧视历史的州的歧视性法律的影响。
美国最高法院最近否决了联邦《投票权法案》中的一项条款，该条款认为预先批准程序已经过时，因而将其作废。
德克萨斯州民主党人表示，他们“100%”相信曼钦试图做的事情将保护他们想要实现的目标。
州参议员卡罗尔·阿尔瓦拉多(Carol Alvarado)说:“我们被他的言论所鼓舞，我认为我们知道他的道路是什么，那就是专注于比S.1窄得多的东西，专注于专门解决投票权和预先批准的东西。”他指的是参议院上个月投票否决的全面选举改革法案——呼吁扩大邮寄和缺席投票，要求自动选民登记，以及重大的竞选财务和道德改革。
但是，是否有足够的两党支持更窄的立法也不清楚，尽管阿拉斯加共和党参议员莉萨·穆尔科斯基表示，她将帮助召集她的会议支持这项努力。
由于基础设施和预算法案预计将从下周开始占用数月的会议时间，参议院此时通过立法将异常困难。
Texas Democrats meet with Manchin on voting rights
Roughly a dozen Texas Democrats who fled their state to come to Washington met Thursday in a Capitol Hill basement with the Senate Democrat who holds the key vote in Congress on voting rights legislation, West Virginia's Joe Manchin.
But apparently, the subject of Manchin making an exception to the Senate's filibuster rule for voting rights never came up.
Emerging from the hour-long meeting, Manchin told reporters, "It was a very good meeting. It was a very informative meeting, and basically, we've all come to a total agreement that what we want is basically to protect voting rights. That's it. A voting rights bill with guardrails. That's all."
The centrist Democratic senator, who has refused to support an exception to the filibuster rule requiring 60 votes to move forward on most legislation in the 50-50 Senate, said that hot topic pushed by many voting rights activists wasn't even discussed.
"A filibuster doesn’t need to (happen)," Manchin insisted after the meeting, claiming, "There shouldn't be a Democrat or a Republican that wouldn't or couldn't or shouldn't vote for something that truly just only deals with voting and the rights of voters."
Later, the Texas Democrats confirmed to reporters that the filibuster indeed wasn’t mentioned, saying that was by design.
"I think enough people have discussed the filibuster with Joe Manchin. That’s the elephant sitting in the room. Everybody knows what the deal is," said state Rep. Joe Moody of El Paso, the now-former speaker pro tempore of the Texas House after Republicans voted to strip him of that title.
The meeting comes a day after President Joe Biden made an impassioned speech calling Republican efforts to restrict voting rights an "assault on democracy" but didn't mention Manchin or the Senate filibuster rule.
Manchin said he is working on legislation, but it is not clear if that would be a new effort, or if it would be the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, designed to restore and modernize the 1960s era- process of "pre-clearance" by the Justice Department that protected minority populations from discriminatory laws in states with a history of discrimination.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down a section of the federal Voting Rights Act that voided that pre-clearance process as outdated.
And Texas Democrats said they are "100%" confident that what Manchin is trying to do will protect what they want to accomplish.
"We were encouraged by his comments and I think we know what his path is and it’s to focus on something a lot more narrower than S.1 and to focus on something that specifically addresses voting rights and pre-clearance," said state Sen. Carol Alvarado, referencing the sweeping election reform bill -- calling for expanded mail-in and absentee voting, requiring automatic voter registration, and major campaign finance and ethics reforms -- that the Senate voted down last month.
But whether there is sufficient bipartisan support for narrower legislation is also unclear, though Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski has said she will help rally her conference to back the effort.
Getting legislation through the Senate at this time would be extraordinarily difficult with infrastructure and budget bills expected to consume months of floor time starting next week.
