Dems walk, stop Texas GOP's voting bill

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) – Texas Democrats pulled off a dramatic, last-ditch walkout in the statehouse of Representatives Sunday, May 30, to block passage of a voting bill, leaving Republicans with no choice but to abandon a midnight deadline and declare the legislative session essentially over.

The revolt is one of Democrats' biggest protests to date against Republican Party efforts nationwide to impose stricter election laws, and they used the spotlight to urge President Joe Biden to act on voting rights.

The bill would have banned drive-thru voting locations and temporary polling places and impose state felony penalties on public officials who offer vote-by-mail applications to residents who did not request them.

According to published reports, the final draft states that people applying for mail ballots would be required to adhere to new identification requirements, including in most cases having a driver’s license or Social Security number.

It also included a ban on 24-hour voting.

A last-minute addition to the bill also allowed a state court to overturn an election if “the number of votes illegally cast in the election is equal to or greater than the number of votes necessary to change the outcome of an election,” rather than being required to confirm tangible evidence of fraud.

The victory may be fleeting: Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who had declared new voting laws a priority in Texas, quickly announced he would order a special session to finish the job. He called the failure of the bill “deeply disappointing” but did not say when he would drag lawmakers back to work.

“We’ve said for so many years that we want more people to participate in our democracy. And it just seems that’s not the case,” Democratic state Rep. Carl Sherman said.

One by one, Democrats left the House chamber until there was no longer the 100-member quorum needed to pass Senate Bill 7.

They gathered later outside a Black church, driving home their anger over a last-minute change to the Texas bill that would have prohibited Sunday voting before 1 p.m. Democrats said they did not go into the House vote intending to break quorum, but instead became fed-up after Republicans repeatedly refused to take their questions while racing to pass the bill.

It was a stunning turnabout from just 24 hours earlier, when the bill seemed all but guaranteed to reach Abbott's desk.

But as the day wore on in the House, the GOP's chances wobbled. State Rep. Chris Turner, the Democratic House leader, said he sent a text message to members of his caucus at 10:35 p.m. telling them to leave the chamber. But by that point, the exodus was already well underway.

“We knew today, with the eyes of the nation watching actions in Austin, that we needed to send a message, and that message is very, very clear: Mr. President, we need a national response to federal voting rights,” Democratic state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer said.

Republicans showed restraint in criticizing Democrats for the move.

“I am disappointed that some members decided to break quorum,” Republican state Rep. Briscoe Cain, who carried the bill in the House, said. “We all know what that meant. I understand why they were doing it, but we all took an oath to Texans that we would be here to do our jobs.”

Texas is the last big battleground in Republicans’ campaign to tighten voting laws, driven by former President Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Georgia and Florida have also passed new voting restrictions, and Biden Saturday, May 29, had unfavorably compared Texas’ bill to election changes in those states as “an assault on democracy.”

Major corporations joined the backlash, including Texas-based American Airlines and Dell, warning that the efforts could harm democracy and the economic climate. But Republicans shrugged off their objections and by the time the Texas bill was poised to pass over the Memorial Day weekend, the opposition from businesses had grown faint.

Since Trump’s defeat, at least 14 states have enacted more restrictive voting laws, according to the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice. It has counted nearly 400 bills filed this year nationwide that would tighten voting laws to protect the integrity of elections.

Associated Press writer Jim Vertuno contributed to this report.