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What do voters have to do with it? The constitution is clear: “Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings...” Furthermore, in no place does it say that votes shall be determined by a majority. The founders probably thought this was too obvious to specify, but it isn’t.

If the houses of Congress want to turn the most important decisions over to majority leaders, they may do so. If the House of Representatives wants to let votes be blocked by the majority of the majority instead of by the majority of members, it may do so. If the Senate wants to require 60 percent, it may do so. And there’s not a damn thing the voters can do about it short of pitchforks or even more unlikely, refusing to reelect incumbents. Voters can’t even reform with a constitutional amendment because amendments can only be initiated by Congress.

The Senate filibuster is covered by Wikipedia: Filibuster in the United States Senate. This is a shorter, opinionated interpretation.

The filibuster started as a perfectly reasonable Senate rule on stopping debate. Obviously, you want debate to cover the issues, but you don’t want a minority to debate forever to delay a vote. So a percentage of Senators (originally two thirds, now three fifths) could stop debate as a delaying tactic.

Senate Rule XXII allows any Senator, or a series of Senators, to speak as long as they wish on any topic until three-fifths of Senators bring debate to a close by invoking cloture. This used to mean that you actually had to speak until 60 percent told you to shut up, but in recent years you only have to threaten to talk. Since carrying out your threat means the end of all Senate business and hurts the majority more than the minority, the threat has become as effective as the real thing.

Thus, a reasonable rule to control debate became a delaying tactic which in turn became a super-majority requirement. Obviously there are numerous ways to revise the rule to eliminate the filibuster, but Senators don’t want to end it because everyone knows they will be in the minority at some point.

Filibusters not only stop legislation, they often make legislation worse and harder to amend or repeal. Take the Affordable Care Act. By threatening to vote against cloture, two or three conservative Democrats had great influence on the final bill. They killed features that the majority of Democrats favored. At the same time party discipline prevented any Republicans from offering to break the filibuster in exchange for including their proposals. Democrats had to compromise with their own party, but couldn’t compromise with the other party. Republicans have been talking about repealing Obamacare ever since, but the filibuster stands in their way. Even if Republicans won the presidency and a majority in both houses, they’d still need 60 votes in the Senate.

The Senate is broken by its own rules. You can’t blame this on Democrats because but the first filibuster crisis occurred in 2005 with a Republican majority. Republicans threatened to end the filibuster, but Republicans and Democrats eventually worked out a compromise.

In 2013 the Democratic majority ended the filibuster for executive and judicial nominees other than Supreme Court nominees. Republicans who condemned this move in the strongest terms at the time are not so sure now that they are the majority.

It remains to be seen whether Republicans will keep Democratic filibuster reforms. They might even eliminate the filibuster entirely. Their whole strategy of blaming the president for blocking their legislation is in danger because Democrats in the Senate will filibuster so that the President doesn’t have to veto.

Let’s hope that Republicans will end the filibuster for good. It may be good Democrats now and for the Senate in some ways, but it is bad for the country.

The argument for the filibuster is that it gives the minority some power so that it can’t be bulldozed by majority party leaders. But a better way of empowering the minority would be to give the minority power. For example, 40 percent of either house should be able to petition to override party leaders and committee chairs to force a vote on any issue.

What chance would that reform have? Zero. Party leaders control voting procedures in both houses, and they will never allow a vote to give up their power. This is bipartisan. The only way to change is for outsiders to impose fairness over the objections of the parties. That means a constitutional amendment, but things will have to get a lot worse than they are before we see that.