Supermajority and filibusters
Senator Dodd
With two Democratic senators1 announcing their decisions not to run for re-election, the Senate is faced with the possibility that its Democratic supermajority may disappear. There will be plenty of talk in the next year about supermajorities with the 2010 elections coming along, so you need to be prepared to understand some of the lingo and the meaning behind it.
A supermajority can mean many things (3/5, 2/3, etc.), but for the purpose of the U.S. Senate, a supermajority occurs when 3/5 (or 60 of the 100) vote the same way. What’s important about a supermajority in politics? When a vote receives a supermajority, there can be no filibustering. Currently, there are 60 senators on the Democratic side of most votes. The worry for Democrats is that several of the seats will be filled by Republicans, thus putting an end to the likely possibility of any supermajority voting.
Next question: what is filibustering? When a vote is on the table, think of filibustering as an official statement of “hey… let’s talk about this before we come to any rash decisions.” In other words, opening up a vote for debate over and over again is the act of using a filibuster to delay a voting decision. A supermajority vote on an issue puts an end to any future hemming and hawing about that specific issue.
Read on:
NYTimes.com – The Early Word: Senate Shake-Up
Yahoo! News – 3 Democrats — 2 senators, 1 governor — to retire
- Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota ↩
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