It was an act of desperation – and Texas lawmakers hope Washington D.C. was paying attention.
On Sunday evening, approximately 60 Democrats walked out of the Texas House chamber. Their coordinated absence denied the legislative body a quorum and prevented Republicans from passing Senate Bill 7, a law designed to make voting more difficult. According to The New York Times, S.B. 7 “would have banned both drive-through voting and 24-hour voting; imposed new restrictions on absentee voting; granted broad new autonomy and authority to partisan poll watchers; and increased punishments for mistakes or offenses by election officials.”
For Texas voting rights activists, stopping the bill was a short-term victory in a long-term battle stacked against them. The Republican party dominates the Texas legislature and Republican Governor Greg Abbott has vowed to call a special session where the bill will likely be approved. On Twitter, Abbott threatened to punish the Democrats who “abandon[ed] their responsibilities” by withholding their pay.
But the lawmakers behind the walkout hope their actions inspire action on the federal level.
“Breaking quorum is about the equivalent of crawling on our knees begging the president and the United States Congress to give us the For the People Act and give us the John Lewis Voting Rights Act,” said Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, a San Antonio Democrat.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice, The For the People Act would “make it easier to vote in federal elections, end congressional gerrymandering, overhaul federal campaign finance laws, increase safeguards against foreign interference, strengthen government ethics rules, and more.”
The John Lewis Voting Rights Act, according to Politico, “requires certain jurisdictions to get preapproval from either the Department of Justice or the U.S. District Court for D.C. before making changes to elections.”
Both bills have floundered in D.C., where Senate Republicans can block them via a filibuster. Democrats can eliminate the filibuster with their simple majority, but two Senators – Manchin (D-WV) and Sinema (D-AZ) – have resisted.
In Salon, senior politics writer Amanda Marcotte ripped into Manchin and Sinema:
Senate Democrats, especially those who are upholding the filibuster, should be wracked with shame witnessing the situation in Texas. These state legislators basically have no real power and yet they are doing everything they can to preserve the basic notion that Americans have a right to vote for their leaders. But because a couple of centrist Democrats are infatuated with the filibuster, the actual Democratic majority in the Senate is hamstrung to do even the bare minimum to save U.S. democracy from Trump and Republicans’ scheming.
Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Tex.), a co-founder of the Congressional Voting Rights Caucus, made a similar point to The Washington Post, “If we don’t pass these bills, then shame on us,” Veasey said. “And be prepared to see even more of these bills continue to make their way through the states.”
Indeed, anti-voting bills have popped up across the country. At least 61 bills with restrictive provisions are moving through 18 state legislatures, according to a report from the Brennan Center for Justice.
“This game isn’t done — we are just gearing up for a floor fight,” Tiffany Muller, the president of End Citizens United and Let America Vote, told The New York Times. “At the end of the day, every single senator is going to have to make a choice if they are going to vote to uphold the right to vote or uphold an arcane Senate rule. That is the situation that creates the pressure to act.”
Manchin has called the voting rights legislation pushed by Democrats “too darn broad.” Sinema supports both bills, but she’s stopped short of endorsing the rules maneuvering needed to get them past recalcitrant Republicans.
