Texas senate passes voting restrictions bill after 15-hour filibuster by Democrat
The Texas senate has passed a bill that would impose voting restrictions in the state, shortly after a Democratic legislator concluded a 15-hour filibuster of the proposal.
Carol Alvarado, a state senator, had continued her filibuster into Thursday morning in the latest tactic to extend the nation’s most visible standoff over voting rights.
The vote was eventually carried 18-11, falling along party lines.
Shortly before ending her filibuster, Alvarado asked her colleagues to consider the severe ramifications of making it harder to vote in Texas. “As we draw this discussion to an end, it is my sincere hope that civil acts by everyday Texans, from the senate floor to the ballot box, can help to shed the light on all important issues,” Alvarado said. “What do we want our democracy to look like?”
The bill still needs to pass the Texas house, where Republicans do not currently have a quorum to advance legislation. Dozens of Democratic legislators remain out of the state to block the voting bill from going into effect.
But the Texas house speaker, Dade Phelan, this week signed 52 civil arrest warrants for the absent Democrats, who have given no indication that they plan to return to Austin anytime soon.
Alvarado had worn running shoes on the senate floor – much like former legislator Wendy Davis, known for her lengthy filibuster in 2013 of an antiabortion bill. Alvarado’s filibuster began hours after officers of the Texas house of representatives had delivered the civil arrest warrants for the absent Democrats on Wednesday. Frustrated Republicans have ratcheted up efforts to end a standoff over a sweeping elections bill that has continued for 32 days.
But after sergeants-at-arms finished making the rounds inside the Texas capitol – dropping off copies of the warrants at Democrats’ offices, and politely asking staff to tell their bosses to please return – there were few signs the stalemate that began when Democrats fled to Washington DC in July in order
to grind the statehouse to a halt was any closer to a resolution.
The latest escalation threw the Texas legislature into uncommon territory with neither side showing any certainty over what comes next, or how far Republicans could take their determination to secure a quorum of 100 present lawmakers – a threshold they were just four members shy of reaching.
“I don’t worry about things I can’t control,” said state representative Erin Zwiener, one of the Democrats who was served with a warrant and has refused to return to the capitol. “Nothing about these warrants are a surprise, and they don’t necessarily affect my plans.”
Democrats, who acknowledge they cannot permanently stop the GOP voting bill from passing because of Republicans’ dominance in both chambers of the Texas legislature, responded to the warrants with new shows of defiance. One turned up in a Houston courtroom and secured a court order aimed at preventing him from being forced to return to the capitol.
The NAACP also stepped in on behalf of the Texas Democrats, urging the justice department to investigate whether a federal crime was being committed when Republicans threatened to have them arrested.
Refusing to attend legislative sessions is a violation of house rules – a civil offense, not a criminal one, leaving the power the warrants carry to get Democrats back to the chamber unclear, even for the Republicans who invoked it. Democrats would not be jailed. Republican Travis Clardy, who helped negotiate an early version of the voting bill that Democrats first stopped with a walkout in May, told ABC News he believed “they can be physically brought back to the capitol”.
The move marks a new effort by Republicans to end the protest over elections legislation that began a month ago with 50 Democrats taking private jets to Washington in a dramatic show of resolve to make Texas the frontline of a new national battle over voting rights.
Republicans are in the midst of their third attempt since May to pass a raft of tweaks and changes to the state’s election code that would make it harder – and even, sometimes, legally riskier – to cast a ballot in Texas, which already has some of the most restrictive election laws in the nation.