Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin opposes a sweeping voting-rights bill that his party's trying to pass.
Manchin cosponsored the same bill in 2019, when it also had no GOP backers.
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin in 2019 cosponsored the voting-rights bill that he recently announced he would vote against, arguing for a bipartisan bill instead.
Manchin's refusal to back the For the People Act has tanked Democrats' hopes of passing sweeping election reforms.
As the Senate is evenly divided, relying on a tiebreaking vote from Vice President Kamala Harris, Manchin can single-handedly block the bill's passage.
In an op-ed article for the Charleston Gazette-Mail on Sunday, Manchin argued that he couldn't support a voting-rights bill with no bipartisan support.
But Manchin was a cosponsor of a version of the bill introduced in 2019 that had no GOP cosponsors, a fact that his critics have highlighted. »