U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-GA, spoke during a news conference Jan. 4 urging Republicans to debate federal voting rights bills.

In the wake of the one year anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack of the Capitol, Democrat senators are posturing for a final attempt at nationwide voting reform laws, which has been halted by Republicans through filibuster for most of 2021.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, said the Jan. 6, 2021, deadly attack on the Capitol was an effort by former President Donald Trump and his supporters to delegitimize the 2020 election results following Trump’s loss to Democrat President Joe Biden.

Schumer alongside other Democrat senators Tuesday — including Raphael Warnock of Georgia — gave Republicans a deadline of Jan. 17, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, to allow a debate on proposed federal voting reform bills. If not, he said the Democrat-led Senate would proceed by considering changes to Senate filibuster rules.

“The election subversion efforts we’re seeing all across the country today are a direct continuation of Jan. 6. … They’re all directly related to the same anti-democratic poison and the ‘big lie,’” Schumer said at a news conference Tuesday.

“Republican legislatures are changing the rules and preventing poor people, people of color, people who live in cities, older people, disabled people, young people from voting. It’s not aimed at everybody, it’s aimed at particular groups and we all know to achieve political advantage. Republican state legislatures are promoting the big lie to justify disenfranchising legitimate voters,” Schumer said.

Several Democrat-led voter reform bills were introduced in Congress in 2021— including the Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act — but neither garnered debate in Senate chambers.

Republican senators used the filibuster rule to block voting reform bills more than three times last year. The filibuster rule requires 60 of the 100 senators to agree to debate most legislation; the chamber is currently evenly split among Republicans and Democrats, with Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris’ able to cast a tie-breaking vote.

Schumer did not go into detail on what mechanism would be used to change Senate rules.

Some elements of federal voting rights bills would require absentee ballot drop boxes in every state; early voting minimum standards, allow voters to use a range of identification cards and documents to vote; and mandate nationwide use of machines that deliver paper ballots.

The federal proposals came as several states — including Georgia, Alabama and Texas — enacted laws in 2021 that Democrats say limit voter access following Trump’s defeat.

“Let me be very clear. The elections are still run by the states,” Warnock said. “We’re just trying to provide a federal baseline that says everybody ought to have access, every eligible American has to have access to the ballot.”

More recently, state Sen. Butch Miller, R-Gainesville, filed a bill in December that, if approved, would completely ban absentee ballot drop boxes in Georgia, a service that was implemented and widely used during the pandemic in 2020.

“They are trying to make it harder for some people to vote and easier to cheat. We’re trying to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat.” Warnock said. “…You need to find yourself on the right side of history, pushing to get these bills done and so I urge my colleagues to do the right thing. And if those on the other side refuse to do it, the Democrats will have to act alone but by all means, we have to act.”