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Senator Joe Manchin carries a fateful burden. By quirk of gridlock, he is literally the swing vote between two warring visions for the vote itself. If he gives his decisive 50th vote in the Senate to pass S. 1 — the For the People Act — millions are sure to revolt against perceived tyranny from Democrats expanding the franchise with national standards. If he votes no, millions are sure to revolt against perceived tyranny from Republicans restricting the franchise with new state laws. Poisonous division will intensify either way, at least for a time.
Senator Manchin correctly believes that extreme partisanship is a danger signal for American democracy. By the Founders’ design, our “experiment†in republican self-government rests on public trust in votes, which President Lyndon Johnson once called “the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice.†Yet confidence in republican institutions has frayed for decades by every objective measure, and vote-based American democracy is disparaged or helpless in many countries ruled by autocrats, armies and coups. Wherever democracy weakens, appeals to violence break loose.
The pending crisis is frightful but hardly unprecedented. In fact, hyperpartisanship has been a constant threat when Americans contend over who can vote. Conflict is nearly inevitable because our Constitution does not define the electorate. Nor does it give anyone an explicit right to vote. Voting rights now cherished routinely were once battlegrounds, and US history offers warnings along with lessons for repair.
Manchin’s home state was born from prolonged rancor over voting rules written into the Virginia state constitution of 1776. Virginians who lived in its western counties protested representation that heavily favoured property holders and slaveholders east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The malapportionment was so severe that ex-presidents James Madison and James Monroe, plus the revered Chief Justice John Marshall, supported reform at a special convention in 1829. Delegates were chosen under the current constitutional formula, however, and they rejected “this maggot of innovation.†With only one western representative voting for the status quo result, sectional disputes festered until they split Virginia some 30 years later.
Harpers Ferry changed hands eight times during the Civil War. On April 18, 1861 — six days after the attack on Fort Sumter — wildcat secessionists attacked the same US armory that John Brown recently had occupied in his famously failed attempt to spark an anti-slavery rebellion. US Army troops, having captured Brown for the gallows, burned the armory this time to keep weapons from the expected pro-slavery rebellion in Virginia.
Most western Virginians stayed loyal to the Union, defying their Confederate government. “The Kanawha Valley is wholly traitorous,†charged the Confederate general and former Virginia governor Henry Wise. Citizens there initiated plebiscites and conventions counter to Confederate ones, petitioning Congress to admit a territory first called Kanawha. They persevered until West Virginia became the 35th state on June 20, 1863. This unique origin gave Harpers Ferry a permanent new address just as the invading Confederate armies overran it again headed toward Gettysburg.
—Bloomberg