More than half of Americans nationwide support raising the minimum wage to $15/hour [1] -- but because of the filibuster, the question might not even get a fair up-or-down vote in the new Senate.

That’s right: once again, the filibuster is being abused in the Senate to shut down progress on an issue that matters to voters. And unless we speak out right now -- we’ll see this happen again and again at Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s direction.

The filibuster is a parliamentary maneuver that wasn’t routinely used until recently. It requires 60 senators to vote to advance most bills -- so even if a majority of senators support a bill, a handful of their colleagues can still abuse the process to kill it. (Notably, the filibuster has been abused in the past by racist senators to block civil rights legislation.)

The voters took away McConnell's gavel. He shouldn’t be able to use the filibuster to exercise absolute veto power over our entire legislative process. That is not democracy.

That’s why we’re calling on the new Senate to make abolishing the filibuster a priority. This is hardly a radical idea -- the filibuster has changed many times over, major political figures from various ideological backgrounds support eliminating it, and it doesn’t even appear in the Constitution.

It’d only take a simple majority vote in the Senate to get rid of the filibuster. But unfortunately, some Democratic senators in the new Congress have hesitated to back the idea.

We must let them know that the American people are counting on them to do what’s right for our democracy. If you agree that it’s time to abolish the undemocratic filibuster, add your name today.

1) https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/poverty/540599-most-americans-back-raising-federal-minimum-wage-to-15-poll