Democratic senator Joe Manchin says he won't back Biden's election reform bill

West Virginia senator also reiterates his opposition to reforming filibuster

Joe Manchin has become a key figure in the president’s efforts to get his agenda through the upper chamber (Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

One of the US Senate’s most crucial swing votes, Senator Joe Manchin, has announced that he will oppose the Democrats’ election reforms bill.

In an op-ed for the Charleston Gazette-Mail published early on Sunday morning, the West Virginia Democrat wrote that voting reforms that were pushed through in a partisan manner would “all but ensure partisan divisions continue to deepen” across the country.

His announcement all but ensures the bill’s downfall in the fiercely divided 50-50 Senate.

Mr Manchin also wrote that he remained opposed to any efforts to end or weaken the filibuster, a Senate provision that causes most legislation to require 60 votes for passage, and also called for compromise on the issue of voting rights: a bipartisan reauthorisation of the Voting Rights Act.

“I believe that partisan voting legislation will destroy the already weakening binds of our democracy, and for that reason, I will vote against the For the People Act. Furthermore, I will not vote to weaken or eliminate the filibuster,” Mr Manchin wrote.

Along with fellow Demoratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Mr Manchin has emerged in recent months as a major hurdle for Democrats eager to pass whatever parts of President Joe Biden’s agenda can be salvaged in the Senate, where the party is 10 votes shy of the threshold needed to pass most legislation.

Many Democrats including former President Barack Obama have likened the filibuster to a “Jim Crow relic” in recent months and called for it to be abolished in order to address voting rights, which the party warns are under attack around the nation by Republican-led state legislatures.

Mr Manchin has pointed to his party’s own past use of the filibusters in his defences of the measure, while calling for Democrats to reach compromise with Republicans even as many supported objections to the certification of the Electoral College results in January after the US Capitol was attacked by supporters of former President Donald Trump.