Texas Democrats Cause ‘Good Trouble’ To Block Most Extreme Jim Crow 2.0 Voter Suppression Bill In The Nation

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Late on Sunday night, on a Memorial Day weekend when most Americans were distracted, the Texas Lege tried to pass the most anti-democratic, Jim Crow 2.0 voter suppression bill in the nation. EXPLAINER: How Texas Republicans aim to make voting harder. (Texas is already the most difficult state in the country to vote, it is the reason why Texas has historically been 50th in voter turnout.)

The measure would have made it illegal for election officials to send out unsolicited mail ballot applications, empowered partisan poll watchers and banned practices such as drop boxes and drive-through voting that were popularized in the heavily Democratic Harris County last year. It would have barred early voting hours on Sunday mornings, potentially hampering get-out-the-vote programs aimed at Black churchgoers.

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The final version included numerous provisions inserted at the last minute, including language making it easier to overturn an election, no longer requiring evidence that fraud actually altered an outcome but only that enough ballots were illegally cast that could have made a difference. The legislation also would have changed the legal standard for overturning an election from “reasonable doubt” to “preponderance of the evidence” — a much lower evidentiary bar.

The Jim Crow 2.0 voter suppression bill cleared the Texas Senate before Democrats in the Texas House resorted to a procedural maneuver that they last resorted to almost a decade ago, blocking  Republicans in the House from passing the most extreme voter suppression bill in the nation as the clock expired on the legislative session.

The Washington Post reports, Texas Democrats block restrictive voting bill by walking off the floor to deny GOP-majority House a quorum:

Texas Democrats staged a dramatic walkout in the state House late Sunday night to block passage of a restrictive voting bill that would have been one of the most stringent in the nation, forcing Republicans to abruptly adjourn without taking a vote on the measure.

The surprise move came after impassioned late-night debate and procedural objections about the GOP-backed legislation, which would have made it harder to vote by mail, empowered partisan poll watchers and made it easier to overturn election results. Republicans faced a midnight deadline to approve the measure.

Gov. Greg Abbott (R) tweeted that he would add the bill to a special session he plans to call later this year to address legislative redistricting. “Legislators will be expected to have worked out the details when they arrive at the Capitol for the special session,” he wrote.

But it was an unmistakable defeat for the governor and fellow Republicans, who had crafted one of the most far-reaching voting bills in the country — pushing restrictions championed by former president Donald Trump, who has falsely claimed that his defeat in the 2020 election was tainted by fraud.

The “Texodus” from the floor came after Chris Turner, the House Democratic chairman, sent instructions to colleagues at 10:35 p.m. Central time instructing them to exit the House, according to an image shared with The Washington Post.

“Members, take your key and leave the chamber discreetly,” Turner wrote, referring to the key that locks the voting mechanism on their desks. “Do not go to the gallery. Leave the building.”

“We decided to come together and say we weren’t going to take it,” state Rep. Jessica González (D) said in an interview after the walkout, adding that she objected to the measure’s content and the way it was crafted with no input from her side of the aisle. “We needed to be part of the process. Cutting us out completely — I mean, this law will affect every single voter in Texas.”

As the night wore on, it became clear that House Democrats intended to do everything they could to block Senate Bill 7, pushing the legislation perilously close to the body’s midnight deadline to act. At one point early in the session, more than two dozen Democrats were absent for a procedural vote, prompting a flurry of speculation that they might try to block a vote by denying the House the necessary quorum.

Calling the measure “egregious” and “horrific,” Democratic lawmakers likened it to the Jim Crow laws of the 20th century that effectively barred Black Americans from voting in Southern states. They sought to slow the process by arguing that the bill had not been properly debated in either chamber.

“That means the voices of Texans were not heard in this debate,” said Rep. John Bucy III (D).

“Every American needs to be watching what’s happening in Texas right now,” Rep. Colin Allred (D-Tex.) – a voting rights attorney – said Sunday at a news conference. “And we have to have a federal response to this because this has gone way too far.”

“This isn’t legislation,” he added. “This is discrimination.”

Rep. Colin Allred (D-Tex.) told MSNBC on Monday that the Texas Senate Bill 7, the Republican-backed Jim Crow 2.0 voter suppression bill, ‘Is So Explicitly Discriminatory That It Is Embarrassing’:

Allred said, “I think our democracy is at a tipping point. What you just talked about here is overturning elections, stopping certain Americans from voting. That’s how you lose your democracy. We’re having a very sanitized conversation about this, pretending, so to speak, that this is Democrats and Republicans and the usual push and pull. This is not usual. This is not normal. Talking about being able to overturn elections because you want to have fraud allegations or stop specific groups from voting is totally outside the balance.”

He continued, “I’m really grateful and proud of Texas House Democrats for using whatever tools they have at their disposal to try to stop this bill from passing last night. That was the right thing to do, and obviously, the governor said he’s going to call a special session, and they’re going to come back and try to pass this bill.”

Allred added, “When you’re talking about moving back Sunday early morning voting, which that’s been a tradition in Texas for years, and every single day of early voting, you can vote in the morning but all of a sudden on Sunday, you can’t go vote until 1:00 in the afternoon, or you can vote between 1:00 and 9:00 in the afternoon. That is so clearly aimed at souls to the polls and stopping Black voters from going to church, one of the few institutions the Black community has had for so long, going to church and talking and going together to the polling place, which is a tradition in the black community. That is explicitly targeting Black voters. But they’re also targeting other types of assistance for voters in which English isn’t their first language in polling places to harass them. This bill is so explicitly discriminatory that it’s embarrassing. I was a voting rights lawyer when I came to Congress. We often see these things as a little bit nebulous. It’s hard to say. This is not one of those bills. This is extremely explicit.”

[I]n a statement, Turner said that dozens of House Democrats were prepared to give speeches objecting to the bill, but that “it became obvious Republicans were going to cut off debate to ram through their vote suppression legislation. At that point, we had no choice but to take extraordinary measures to protect our constituents and their right to vote.”

After the walkout, House Democrats assembled at a predominantly Black church in Austin, Mt. Zion Fellowship Hall, to speak to reporters. Staff members said leaders chose the location to highlight the party’s successful fight against a bill they said would have targeted voters of color in particular.

“We remain vigilant against any attempt to bring back this racist bill in a special session,” Sarah Labowitz, policy and advocacy director for the ACLU of Texas, said in a statement.

Democrats urged Congress to pass federal voting rights legislation, which has been stalled in the U.S. Senate.

“This is a now-or-never moment in American democracy,” Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) said, adding: “If we don’t act now, then our democracy is not going to look the same either in 2022 or 2024.”

The Post continues, After defeating restrictive voting bill, Texas Democrats send loud message: ‘We need Congress to do their part’:

Texas Democrats who defeated a Republican effort to pass a suite of new voting restrictions with a dramatic late-night walkout from the state House chamber on Sunday have a message for President Biden and his allies in Congress: If we can protect voting rights, you can, too.

The surprise move by roughly 60 Democratic lawmakers headed off the expected passage of S.B. 7, a voting measure that would have been one of the most stringent in the nation, by denying Republicans a required quorum and forcing them to abruptly adjourn without taking a vote.

The coordinated walkout just after 10:30 p.m. Central time jolted the national debate on voting rights, putting the spotlight on Democratic-backed federal legislation that has been stalled in the Senate all spring, even as state Republicans move to enact new voting rules.

“We knew today, with the eyes of the nation watching action in Austin, that we needed to send a message,” state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, a San Antonio Democrat, said at a news conference held at a historically Black church in Austin early Monday, shortly after he and other lawmakers left the state Capitol. “And that message is very, very clear: Mr. President, we need a national response to federal voting rights.”

[A]fter taking their stand, the state Democrats said they want allies elsewhere in the country to seize the moment and show the same kind of resolve — particularly in Washington, where Democrats control the presidency and both chambers of Congress yet are struggling to pave the way for two major pieces of voting legislation: the For the People Act, a sprawling overhaul of federal elections, ethics and campaign finance law; and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would reauthorize the seminal 1965 Voting Rights Act by giving the federal government fresh power to police jurisdictions with histories of racial discrimination in voting administration.

“We did our part to stop SB 7,” tweeted state Rep. Erin Zwiener (D). “Now we need Congress to do their part.”

“State lawmakers are holding the line,” tweeted state Rep. James Talarico (D). “Federal lawmakers need to get their s— together and pass the For The People Act.”

In an interview, Martinez Fischer said that national leaders need to rise to the occasion.

“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,” he said.

Much of the pressure to secure voting rights nationally falls primarily on two Democratic senators who have publicly expressed reluctance to eliminate their chamber’s filibuster, which requires 60 votes to allow legislation to move forward. In the current 50-50 Senate, that means major legislation cannot advance without support from at least 10 Republicans.

While top Democratic leaders did not react publicly Monday to the blocking of the Texas bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) have continued to push for passage of the For the People Act.

It would take a simple majority of every Senate Democrat, plus tiebreaker Vice President Harris, to eliminate the filibuster. Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) have led the opposition to taking that step.

Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Tex.), a co-founder of the Congressional Voting Rights Caucus, said in an interview Monday that Congress must find a way to pass federal voting protections in part because Black voters are the Democrats’ most reliable constituency — and are under the gravest threat from GOP-proposed restrictions around the country.

“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.”

* * *

President Biden did not directly address the Texas drama during a Memorial Day address Monday at Arlington National Cemetery. But he described the right to vote as a foundational aspect of America’s system of government that soldiers have given their lives defending.

“Democracy thrives when the infrastructure of democracy is strong,” Biden said. That includes ensuring “people have the right to vote freely, fairly and conveniently.”

President Biden warned that “democracy itself is in peril” from radicalized Republicans in thrall to the MAGA/QAnon personality cult of Donald Trump, and their Jim Crow 2.0 assault on Americans’ voting rights.

On Saturday, the president called the Texas legislation “wrong and un-American,” and called on Congress to pass the two federal voting rights bills.

In addition to pressuring Congress, Texas Democrats said other states where voting restrictions are being considered must find new ways to block them. Already, such measures have passed in Georgia, Florida, Iowa and elsewhere, but more measures are still being debated in Arizona and Michigan, among other states.

It was not lost on Texas Democrats that they blocked S.B. 7 using a procedural rule requiring two-thirds of members to be present to vote on legislation — much as the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate has the power to eliminate the filibuster, a chamber tradition that is not enshrined in any law or judicial decision.

Several Texas lawmakers spoke proudly of causing “good trouble” — a phrase Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who died last year, famously used to describe his willingness to engage in civil disobedience as a leader in the civil rights movement.

State Democrats said they had no other choice but to invoke the last-ditch legislative tradition of breaking quorum, which dates back to at least the age of President Abraham Lincoln.

“We know how to talk for a long time when we need to,” state Rep. Chris Turner, chairman of the Texas House Democrats, said at the news conference early Monday. “We know how to slow things down. We were determined to take that bill off the cliff because the midnight deadline would pass and no more bills could become law.”

But then, Turner said, it became clear Republicans were moving to shut off debate. At 10:35 p.m. local time, he sent a text to his fellow Democrats: “Members, take your key and leave the chamber discreetly. Do not go to the gallery. Leave the building.”

“They were prepared to cut us off and silence us,” he told reporters later. “We were not going to let them do that. That’s why Democrats used the last tool available to us. We denied them the quorum that they needed to pass that bill and we killed that bill.”

Abbott’s promise to revisit the voting bill in Texas means the legislature could take up a similar measure to S.B. 7 later in the year, when he plans to call a special session to redraw political districts with new census data.

But several voting rights advocates said the fact that Abbott, an outspoken Trump supporter and potential 2024 presidential contender, did not call for an immediate special session on voting suggested uncertainty about whether such a move would end well for him given the national attention that Sunday’s drama attracted.

[T]he Texas measure was the latest example of how Republican legislators around the country have pushed for new voting restrictions as Trump has kept up a barrage of false attacks on the integrity of the 2020 election.





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