U.S. Senate Democrats failed Wednesday to push through voting rights legislation after Senate Republicans blocked the bill, marking the fifth time they’ve stonewalled similar legislation in less than a year.

The bill would have made Election Day a national holiday and expanded access to mail-in voting and early voting, among other protections.

Sen. Michael Bennet called the defeat “deeply disappointing,” noting that the bill’s passage could have put national voting rights on par with Colorado’s comparably strong voter protections.

“Our democracy is in a very fragile state, and I think the answer to that fragile democracy is … to make sure that as many people are voting as possible,” Bennet said Thursday during an interview with The Durango Herald.

Sen. John Hickenlooper expressed similar frustrations with the legislation’s failure in a statement on Twitter.

“Republicans just blocked voting rights legislation – again. The right to vote should not be a partisan issue. It’s what safeguards all our other rights,” Hickenlooper wrote. “I’ll be voting to change the filibuster. Our democracy is too important to lose.”

A Senate rule allows opponents of a bill to block it using the “filibuster,” a tactic used to prolong debate on legislation until 60 of the 100 Senate members vote to end debate. When the voting rights bill was introduced for a vote, it failed to meet the required three-fifths threshold.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer responded by introducing a filibuster rule change that would effectively allow the bill to face a simple majority vote.

Senate Democrats, however, failed to fully coalesce around changing filibuster rules. Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema were the only Democrats to vote down the change, joined by all 50 Republican senators.

Bennet and Hickenlooper were vocal supporters of changing the filibuster rules to pass the voting rights legislation.

In a Wednesday Senate floor speech supporting the bill, Bennet said that “Senate rules are not suspended in amber” and are intended to change with the times.

“I want to have a Senate where you’ve got to come out here and debate, where you can’t filibuster in secret in your office, but you have to be out here to persuade the American people of the righteousness of your cause,” he said. “Where the minority has the right to offer amendments, and where in the end, 51 senators can actually make a decision so that we can move this country forward.”

President Joe Biden recently revived the push for increased voter protections as he urged the Senate to change its filibuster rules.

His vigor was quickly dampened after Manchin and Sinema publicly rejected changing the filibuster in the name of bipartisanship just days before the Wednesday vote.

“Allowing one party to exert complete control in the Senate with only a simple majority will only pour fuel onto the fire of political whiplash and dysfunction that is tearing this nation apart – especially when one party controls both Congress and the White House,” Manchin said. “As such, and as I have said many times before, I will not vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster.”

Laurie Meininger, president of the League of Women Voters of La Plata County, said “the failure of our elected officials to pass a voter rights act jeopardizes all of our rights to vote.”

The league, more than 100 years old and 143 members strong, is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to educating voters and promoting civic participation not just in elections but in all democratic institutions.

“We’re in opposition to anything that’s used as a tool to curtail the rights that we all have as citizens and certainly the filibuster of late seems to be used in that way,” she said.

Though Bennet expressed regret the legislation didn’t pass, he said the fight for better national voting rights is far from over.

“In the meantime, we need to make sure that we protect Colorado’s right to vote,” he said. “The way I think about it is, people in our state really have kind of a bill of rights when it comes to voting, and we’ve got tremendous access, and it’s fraud-free, and we’ve got to protect it now.”

Skye Witley, a senior at American University in Washington, D.C., is an intern for The Durango Herald and The Journal in Cortez.