Insider: Out of 18 pro-democracy bills in 2022, the US Senate filibuster torpedoed 17 of them: report

Members of Congress have been increasingly voting in favor of key democracy issues, such as voting rights and campaign finance reform, but most of these bills didn’t become law anyway.

That’s according to the fourth biennial Democracy Scorecard released Tuesday by Common Cause, a government watchdog group that analyzed the votes and positions of the 117th Congress. Insider obtained an early copy of the report.

Of the 18 House and Senate bills mentioned noted in the report, only one, the Courthouse Ethics and Transparency Act, was signed into law.

The report largely blames the Senate filibuster, which effectively requires 60 votes — not a simple majority of 50 — to advance a bill toward a final vote.

During this congressional session, Republicans have used the filibuster to block most Democrat-led attempts to ram through democracy-centric legislation. While the Senate is split 50-50, Democrats have the majority with Vice President Kamala Harris providing tie-breaking votes.

Some of the bills pertaining to democracy that failed to become law include the Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections Act, a campaign finance reform bill that seeks to push back against dark money in elections; the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, a voting rights bill that would strengthen legal protections against discriminatory voting policies; and the Protecting Our Democracy Act, a reform bill that would help prevent abuses of executive power.

Common Cause also ranked individual members of Congress on their pro-democracy efforts, with 101 members — all Democrats — earning a perfect score. That’s a more than 70% increase over the number of members of Congress who had perfect scores (58) in the 2020 Democracy Scorecard.

Common Cause President Karen Hobert Flynn cited the legislative filibuster as the roadblock to pro-democracy reform.