By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Congressional Republicans managed to win the latest battle in their fight to prevent any federal reform of voting practices. They held together to prevent debate on a legislative package proposed by their Democratic colleagues.

This begs the obvious question: If they believe in their argument against overhauling the federal vote system, why do they insist on denying any reasonable, thorough and comprehensive debate on it on the floor of the U.S. Senate?

I have a theory. It goes like this: They aren’t interested in the issues attached to Democrats’ proposal; they merely want to suppress the vote by making it more difficult for Democratic-leaning voters to cast their ballots.

That’s my way of suggesting that if they are forced to argue the merits of their case, they would lose the war.

Public opinion aligns with the Democrats’ view of voter reform. The public opposes Republican efforts to suppress voters’ access to elections.

Democrats today lost the latest skirmish in this overall war. They did manage to hold their own 50-member caucus together. The problem was it wasn’t enough to break through the 60-vote barrier that would have been required to commence debate on this issue.

I will stay tuned, though, for this struggle to continue. My hope is that we can get past the obstructionism being orchestrated by the once-Grand Old Party.