Last updated on July 18th, 2023 at 01:30 pm
Just before a midnight deadline at the end of the legislation, Texas Democrats walked off the House floor to deny a quorum and blocked an election rigging bill from passing.
But on Sunday night, with an hour left for the Legislature to give final approval to the bill, Democrats staged a walkout, preventing a vote on the legislation before a fatal deadline.
“Leave the chamber discreetly. Do not go to the gallery. Leave the building,” Grand Prairie state Rep. Chris Turner, the chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said in a text message to other Democrats obtained by The Texas Tribune.
The Texas bill puts new restrictions on mail-in voting, limits early voting hours, and ends local options like drive-thru voting.
In other words, it is a bill targeting everything that Democrats have gotten really good at using to get their voters to the polls.
When people vote in large numbers, Republicans lose. The GOP has mounted a national campaign to prevent people from voting.
The process on the bill will start all over again in the special legislative session, but Republicans were unsuccessful in jamming the bill through in the dead of night, and that is a major victory because more time and public attention will only cause backlash and public outrage to grow.
State Democrats are doing everything that they can to protect voting rights, but they need help from Democrats in Congress and the Biden administration ASAP.
Photo: Alexa Ura of the Texas Tribune via Twitter
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