Another gamechanger? I could absolutely support Manchin’s compromise voting bill, says Stacey Abrams HotAir

What s she up to here?

Two things. Although voter ID got most of the headlines yesterday since it represents Manchin s olive branch to the GOP, the most substantive provision in the bill is the proposed ban on partisan gerrymandering. Manchin wants to use computer models for redistricting instead. Abrams figures this bill is a bargain worth making if it ends up nuking the power of Republican-controlled legislatures in purple states like, say, Georgia to draw district lines in ways that guarantee that a disproportionate number of House seats are safely red. An end to partisan gerrymandering would redistribute Georgia s black Democratic voters more neutrally, potentially threatening several Republican-held seats.

Senate Republicans aren t going to go along with that. They re not going to go along with any Democratic voting bill, I m convinced, even one authored by a red-state centrist like Manchin because the base would view it as condoning cheating. Republican state legislatures spent this past spring writing election integrity laws in response to Trump-fueled suspicions of fraud last November. For Senate Republicans to support a Democratic bill overriding those laws would be deemed a major betrayal by GOP voters even though the laws that have already passed in Georgia and Texas are far more modest in their reforms than Democratic scaremongers would have us believe.

via hotair.com