Alabama coach Nick Saban urges Joe Manchin to support Democrats’ radical election overhaul bill

University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban and NBA Hall of Famer Jerry West have signed an open letter to U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin urging the moderate West Virginia Democrat to support a federal overhaul of U.S. elections to “secure our democracy.”

In the letter, Saban, West, and three other prominent West Virginia sports figures — former West Virginia University athletic director and NFL Houston Oilers player Oliver Luck, former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue, and former Buffalo Bills linebacker Darryl Talley — called on Congress to “exercise its Constitutional responsibility to enact laws that set national standards for the conduct of Federal elections and for decisions that determine election outcomes.”

They are asking Manchin to support the Freedom to Vote Act, a bill introduced by Democrats that would set federal standards for U.S. elections. In addition to expanding early voting and mail-in voting, the bill would undermine Republican supported voter ID laws, limit the ability of states to remove inactive or dead voters from voter rolls, make Election Day a federal holiday, and more.

Democrats lack the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster by Republicans, who are uniformly opposed to a federal overhaul of elections. And Manchin, along with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and at least three other Democrats are opposed to carving out a filibuster exception or getting rid of the filibuster altogether to pass the bill, preventing the 50-50 Democratic majority from taking action on election reforms.- READ MORE