Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, points at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, on the steps of the US Capitol.
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Watchdog group Common Cause ranked Congress on key democracy issues.
101 members of Congress received a perfect score in the 2022 Democracy Scorecard.
That’s more than a 70% increase since 2020. But the Senate filibuster thwarted many reform efforts.
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.
“In the end, with high levels of support in Congress and an overwhelming outpouring of public support, Congress ran into one of the reasons our democracy needs to be modernized: the filibuster,” she wrote in the report.
California had the highest number of members of Congress (19) with perfect scores, and seven states — Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oregon and Vermont — had both US Senators earning a perfect score.
Aaron Scherb, senior director of legislative affairs at Common Cause, told Insider the increase in the number of perfect scores points to the increased level of interest and care from ordinary citizens about protecting their freedoms.
“The increase in the number of perfect scores means that democracy issues are that much more salient now,” he said. “It’s that much more in the public’s conscience. It’s much more of an issue that that people care about.”
The bills mentioned in the report were selected on the basis of which would provide the biggest change and the most consequential reforms, Scherb said.
“We choose bills in consultation with our board and staff that are structural reform bills that would provide significant change and further improve our democracy to help elevate the voices of all Americans,” he said.
Among Republicans in the House, Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois had the highest score for supporting the 18 bills — 8 out of 18. He’s followed by Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming at 7 out of 18, and Rep. John Katko of New York at 6 out of 18.
No other Republicans came close. Both Kinzinger and Cheney are the lone Republican members of the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.