The yearlong quest to enact new voting rights legislation ended in the Senate on Wednesday, with Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) siding with the 50 Republicans against changing Senate filibuster rules to allow the bill to pass.

The failure of the bill marked a bitter disappointment for Democrats , who argued its passage was all that stood in the way of a new era of voter suppression laws in Republican-led states on the inspiration of ex-President Donald Trump s election lies. Those new laws amount to Jim Crow 2.0, President Joe Biden said on Jan. 11 , with states making it harder to vote, and making partisan decisions about whether your vote counts at all.

With the Senates failure to pass the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, those laws limiting voting access and, in Georgia , enabling partisans to purge local election boards will remain on the books for the foreseeable future.

The votes capped a long day of speeches that recalled an institution of yesteryear, with most senators physically in their seats, listening intently to colleagues on both sides of the aisle and even occasionally engaging in real debate with each other on a piece of legislation a rare sight for the so-called worlds greatest deliberative body.

The House-passed version of the legislation is a combination of the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. It would have set federal guidelines for voter access requiring states to allow early and absentee voting, online and automatic voter registration, make Election Day a holiday and restore voting rights to ex-felons, among other things.

The bill also would have restored sections of the historic Voting Rights Act gutted by Supreme Court decisions in 2013 and 2021, and would have provided an affirmative right to vote and access to the ballot that could be enforced in court. In addition, the measure contained limits on partisan gerrymandering and a ban on undisclosed dark money in elections.