Manchin says he favors a scaled-back bill on elections

ABC's Rachel Scott interviews Sen. Joe Manchin

Democrats had better scale back their expectations of passing an omnibus bill on elections and voting, since Sen. Joe Manchin said yesterday that he favors a more modest measure.

"The Democrat from West Virginia told ABC News exclusively that he intends to support the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, a more narrowly tailored piece of voting rights legislation that he said he believes could muster bipartisan support even as voting legislation is becoming a flash point between the two parties," Rachel Scott reports.

"I believe Democrats and Republicans feel very strongly about protecting the ballot boxes allowing people to protect the right to vote making it accessible making it fair and making it secure and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, if we apply that to all 50 states and territories, it's something that can be done -- it should be done," Manchin told Scott. "It could be done bipartisan to start getting confidence back in our system." That bill, named for the civil-rights leader and former House member who died last year, would restore federal monitoring of election laws in states with histories of racial discrimination.

Manchin spoke after the Senate Rules Committee voted 9-9 on the Democrats' reform bill, moving the debate to the full Senate. "Democrats have championed that bill as a necessary step to combat state-level changes to voting laws in largely Republican states that they say are aimed at oppressing largely minority, poorer and young voters," Scott notes. The bill would enact "reforms that lower barriers to voting, including automatic voter registration, requiring voter registration on the day of an election and reforms to gerrymandering and campaign-finance laws." Republicans have called the bill "a power grab" that would weaken democracy.