Seventy-seven million votes. One rule to erase them all

The modern-day filibuster, in a disturbing and substantial way, has neutralized the effect of elections and crippled the ability of the elected majority to govern. The result? The people’s voice in the Senate, and by extension the Congress in general, has been effectively silenced.

Can the people’s voice overpower the filibuster? Consider two measures passed by the House since January 2025: the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2025 and the SAVE America Act. The first would keep men out of women’s sports, an issue supported by 69% of Americans in a 2025 Gallup poll. The second was an election-integrity measure requiring voter photo ID, backed by 80% of Americans, according to Pew and Gallup polls, and requiring proof of citizenship to vote, supported by 83% of Americans, also according to Gallup. Yet, even on issues with widespread support across the political spectrum, the will of the people is simply no match for the high bar set by the filibuster rule. Despite their strong support, these measures stalled in the Senate, where, unless there are 60 votes to break the filibuster, bills die without getting to a floor vote.

If you were among the 77.3 million Americans who voted for President Donald Trump in the last election and were expecting these and other issues to be remedied as a result of his election and the election of Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress, it is safe to assume you have been deeply disappointed. You are not alone.

Why this betrayal feels personal

Are you wondering why the Republicans in Congress and Trump cannot get even fundamental issues that got them elected passed into law? It is because the Republican Senate majority prioritizes keeping the filibuster over the issues that got them elected. For all their tenacity defending the filibuster, test their sincerity by asking yourself if any senator seeking reelection ever campaigned on capitulating on every issue to preserve the filibuster. The filibuster is nothing more than their opposition’s veto power, and look at what the majority tosses aside to preserve it.

Despite the hand-wringing that follows broken promise after broken promise, experience proves they wouldn’t have it any other way. Republican senators blame the opposition, claiming they could not break the filibuster’s threshold. Yet, the majority creates this default self-destruct mechanism when, by a simple majority vote under Article 1, Section 5, of the Constitution, each newly elected Senate adopts its own rules.

The filibuster is neither sacrosanct nor constitutionally required. Quite the contrary, the founders inserted supermajorities into the Constitution in only a handful of extraordinary circumstances: overriding vetoes, treaties, House and Senate impeachments, constitutional amendments, and expelling members from Congress. Remember that when alarmists describe the conduct of ordinary Senate business as the founders intended, as the “nuclear option.”

This is supposed to be a nation ruled by consent of the governed through those we elect. They are to be politically accountable to the people. It’s how our political branches are supposed to work. But the filibuster has rendered all of that a nullity. It is as undemocratic as it is destructive to our republican form of government.

Some insist that the filibuster’s existence is institutionally necessary, citing the importance of tradition and the defense of the minority. But any procedural device that is so powerful that it renders the governing majority impotent on the most vexing, controversial, and significant issues of our day is plainly not defensive but offensive. Issues that drive election results should not have their fate determined by the party not elected to lead.

The founders warned us

Alexander Hamilton warned against exactly this kind of danger in “Federalist 22,” arguing that requiring supermajorities for ordinary legislation can “subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser number” and “destroy the energy of government.” He described the inevitable result as “the impracticability of obtaining a concurrence of necessary votes, kept in a state of inaction” unless the majority capitulated to the minority, even through contemptible compromises of the public good. Hamilton’s warning describes the carnage of the filibuster with uncanny precision.

James Madison gave the same caution in “Federalist 58,” in response to the notion of requiring supermajorities for regular business, saying, “The fundamental principle of free government would be reversed. It would be no longer the majority that would rule; the power would be transferred to the minority.”

The preeminent fear shared among the framers of the Constitution was that of a tyranny of the majority, that pure majority rule was dangerous and could easily lead to an oppressive majority at the expense of individual basic rights. It is ironic that today’s filibuster has turned that fear on its head and has established a tyranny of the minority through the filibuster.

Such examples illustrate how today’s filibuster has neutered the Senate majority when, with barely a whimper, it chose to permit its own defeat over something as rudimentary as requiring American citizenship to vote in American elections. Is it any wonder why late-night backroom deals are becoming the norm rather than the exception? If the filibuster was the sacrosanct institutional monument to tradition it is claimed to be, why do senators act in secret, with no one watching?

The truth is that the filibuster has become a convenient scapegoat for a Senate majority’s abhorrent public policy decisions and risk-averse behavior. How can we possibly expect such institutionalized weakness to ever muster the fortitude necessary to address such issues as maintaining the solvency of Social Security and Medicare, or lowering the national debt? Lawmaking is public business, and darkness has no legitimate place in it.

The real cost

One can wonder about how much lower our national debt and spending levels would be today without the years of omnibus bills, debt-limit deals, and government shutdowns required to get the nine more votes the filibuster demands. But the price for the American people was far higher than even the trillions of dollars it may have cost. The price for them has been their voice in government, and their right to be subject to the government the founders created.

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Sadder still, the price was not paid by them alone. Countless Americans died defending the system the framers built. They knew what they were dying for, and it wasn’t for a Senate procedural device that brings that system to its knees. Yet today, the majority’s fate is in the hands of those whose only interest is their defeat.

The rule’s defenders describe eliminating the filibuster as the “nuclear option,” but that view rests on the fundamentally flawed belief that majority rule determination of regular Senate business is the radical construct, while hostage-taking by the minority is not. In truth, it is the filibuster itself that is the nuclear weapon. It is an institution that disrespects, and in fact holds in contempt, the outcome of our elections. It is time for the filibuster to be vanquished, and the tyranny of the minority overthrown, before we lose the last semblance of majority rule and meaningful representation in our government.

David De La Paz, Esq., is a retired felony prosecutor and former senior counsel to multiple Florida House Speakers. He has successfully argued before the Florida Supreme Court and spent 17 years advising legislative leadership on constitutional structure, legislative process, and public policy.