Voting rights activists during a protest in
Austin in early May against the Texas voting legislation.
Nick
Corasaniti
By Nick
Corasaniti
May 31,
2021
Updated
1:13 a.m. ET
Democrats
in the Texas Legislature staged a dramatic, late-night walkout on Sunday night
to force the failure of a sweeping Republican overhaul of state election laws.
The move, which deprived the session of the minimum number of lawmakers
required for a vote before a midnight deadline, was a stunning setback for
state Republicans who had made a new voting law one of their top priorities.
The effort
is not entirely dead, however. Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, indicated that
he would call a special session of the Legislature, which could start as early
as June 1, or Tuesday, to restart the process. The governor has said that he
strongly supported an election bill, and in a statement he called the failure
to reach one on Sunday “deeply disappointing.” He was widely expected to sign
whatever measure Republicans passed.
“Election
Integrity & Bail Reform were emergency items for this legislative session,”
Mr. Abbott said on Twitter on Sunday night. “They will be added to the special
session agenda.” He did not specify when the session would start.
While
Republicans would still be favored to pass a bill in a special session, the
unexpected turn of events on Sunday presents a new hurdle in their push to
enact a far-reaching election law that would install some of the most rigid
voting restrictions in the country, and cement the state as one of the hardest
in which to cast a ballot.
The final
bill, known as S.B. 7, included new restrictions on absentee voting; granted
broad new autonomy and authority to partisan poll watchers; escalated
punishments for mistakes or offenses by election officials; and banned both
drive-through voting and 24-hour voting, which were used for the first time
during the 2020 election in Harris County, home to Houston and a growing number
of the state’s Democratic voters.
Republicans’
inability to pass the measure on Sunday night was the first major stumble for
the party in its monthslong drive to restrict voting across the nation, and an
embarrassment for G.O.P. leaders in the Texas Legislature who at least
momentarily fell short of a top legislative goal for both the governor and the
Republican Party.
After a
lengthy debate in the State House of Representatives in which Democrats raised
numerous objections, staged lengthy question-and-answer sessions and leveraged
procedural maneuvers, Democrats left the chamber en masse, leaving the chamber
roughly 14 members short of the required 100-member quorum to continue
business. Without the requisite number of legislators, Dade Phelan, the speaker
of the State House, adjourned the session around 11 p.m. local time,
effectively killing the bill for this legislative session.
The
Democratic flight was sparked by State Representative Chris Turner, the party’s
caucus chair in the House, who sent a text message to members at 10:35 p.m.
local time.
“Members,
take your key and leave the chamber discreetly,” Mr. Turner wrote. “Do not go
to the gallery. Leave the building. ~ Chris”
In a
statement early Monday, Mr. Turner said the walkout had been a last resort.
“It became
obvious Republicans were going to cut off debate to ram through their vote
suppression legislation,” he said. “At that point, we had no choice but to take
extraordinary measures to protect our constituents and their right to vote.”
Early
Monday, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, lashed out at his House colleagues
and indirectly criticized the Republican leadership in the House, saying in a
statement that it had “failed the people of Texas tonight. No excuse.”
If Mr.
Abbott calls a special session, Republican legislators would have to start from
scratch, but it is possible that they could simply use the same language and
provisions from S.B. 7, or even introduce a bill with more strident
restrictions on voting access.
From the
outset, the push to install new restrictions on voting in Texas has been
upended by legislative missteps and tension among Republicans in the State
Capitol, marked by multiple late-night voting sessions in both chambers. After
two different versions of the bill were passed by the House and the Senate,
legislators took the bill behind closed doors to hash out a final version in a
panel known as a conference committee.
The
conference committee took more than a week to finalize the measures, reaching
an agreement on Friday, releasing the details of the legislation on Saturday
and leaving both chambers with less than 48 hours to pass the bill.
A
legislative power play by Republicans in the Senate late Saturday led to an
all-night session and hours of impassioned debate and objections from
Democrats. Early Sunday, the Senate passed the bill largely along party lines.
During
debate late Sunday, State Representative Travis Clardy, a Republican,
acknowledged that advancing the bill through the conference committee had
proved to be a lengthy process, but he defended the panel’s methods.
“A lot of
this was done late, I don’t get to control the clock,” Mr. Clardy said. “But I
can assure you that the members of the committee did their absolute best,
dead-level best, to make sure we’ve provided information to all members,
including representative rows. And then we did everything that we could to make
sure this was transparent.”
The effort
in Texas, a major state with a booming population, represents the apex of the
national Republican push to install tall new barriers to voting after President
Donald J. Trump’s loss last year to Joseph R. Biden Jr., with expansive
restrictions already becoming law in Iowa, Georgia and Florida in 2021. Fueled
by Mr. Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud in the election, Republicans
have passed the bills almost entirely along partisan lines, brushing off the
protestations of Democrats, civil rights groups, voting rights groups, major
corporations and faith leaders.
But the
party’s setback in Texas is unlikely to calm Democratic pressure in Washington
to pass new federal voting laws. President Biden and key Democrats in Congress
are confronting rising calls from their party to do whatever is needed —
including abolishing the Senate filibuster, which moderate senators have
resisted — to push through a major voting rights and elections overhaul that
would counteract the wave of Republican laws.
After the
Texas bill became public on Saturday, Mr. Biden denounced it, along with
similar measures in Georgia and Florida, as “an assault on democracy,” blasting
the moves in a statement as “disproportionately targeting Black and Brown
Americans.”
The Battle
Over Voting Rights
Amid months
of false claims by former President Donald J. Trump that the 2020 election was
stolen from him, Republican lawmakers in many states are marching ahead to pass
laws making it harder to vote and changing how elections are run, frustrating
Democrats and even some election officials in their own party.
A Key
Topic: The rules and procedures of elections have become a central issue in
American politics. The Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal-leaning law and
justice institute at New York University, counts 361 bills in 47 states that
seek to tighten voting rules. At the same time, 843 bills have been introduced
with provisions to improve access to voting.
The Basic
Measures: The restrictions vary by state but can include limiting the use of
ballot drop boxes, adding identification requirements for voters requesting
absentee ballots, and doing away with local laws that allow automatic
registration for absentee voting.
More
Extreme Measures: Some measures go beyond altering how one votes, including
tweaking Electoral College and judicial election rules, clamping down on
citizen-led ballot initiatives, and outlawing private donations that provide
resources for administering elections.
Pushback:
This Republican effort has led Democrats in Congress to find a way to pass
federal voting laws. A sweeping voting rights bill passed the House in March,
but faces difficult obstacles in the Senate. Republicans have remained united
against the proposal and even if the bill became law, it would likely face
steep legal challenges.
Florida:
Measures here include limiting the use of drop boxes, adding more
identification requirements for absentee ballots, requiring voters to request
an absentee ballot for each election, limiting who could collect and drop off
ballots, and further empowering partisan observers during the ballot-counting
process.
Texas: The
next big move could happen here, where Republicans in the legislature are brushing
aside objections from corporate titans and moving on a vast election bill that
would be among the most severe in the nation. It would impose new restrictions
on early voting, ban drive-through voting, threaten election officials with
harsher penalties and greatly empower partisan poll watchers.
Other
States: Arizona’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed a bill that would
limit the distribution of mail ballots. The bill, which includes removing
voters from the state’s Permanent Early Voting List if they do not cast a
ballot at least once every two years, may be only the first in a series of
voting restrictions to be enacted there. Georgia Republicans in March enacted
far-reaching new voting laws that limit ballot drop-boxes and make the distribution
of water within certain boundaries of a polling station a misdemeanor. Iowa has
also imposed new limits, including reducing the period for early voting and
in-person voting hours on Election Day. And bills to restrict voting have been
moving through the Republican-led Legislature in Michigan.
He urged
Congress to pass Democrats’ voting bills, the most ambitious of which, the For
the People Act, would expand access to the ballot, reduce the role of money in
politics, strengthen enforcement of existing election laws and limit
gerrymandering. Another measure, the narrower John Lewis Voting Rights Act,
would restore crucial parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that were struck down
by the Supreme Court in 2013, including the requirement that some states receive
federal approval before changing their election laws.
Aside from
Texas, multiple states, including Arizona, Ohio and Michigan, have legislatures
that are still in session and that may move forward on new voting laws.
Republicans in Michigan have pledged to work around a likely veto from Gov.
Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, by collecting signatures from citizens and
seeking to pass new restrictions through a ballot initiative.
Republican
lawmakers in battleground states have been backed in their effort by a party
base and conservative media that have largely embraced the election falsehoods
spread by Mr. Trump and his allies. G.O.P. legislators have argued that the
nation must improve its “election security” even though the results of the last
election have been confirmed by multiple audits, lawsuits, court decisions, election
officials and even Mr. Trump’s own attorney general as free, safe, fair and
secure.
In debate
late Sunday night, Democratic legislators seized on a provision added late in
the process that would make it easier to overturn the results of an election in
the state in some circumstances. Texas law previously required proof that
illicit votes had resulted in a wrongful victory. The new measure says that the
number of fraudulent votes would simply need to be equal to the winning vote
differential; it would not matter for whom those votes had been cast.
“They can
use this to overthrow the voice of the people, to overthrow the voice of
Texas,” said State Representative John Bucy III, a Democrat from near Austin.
“Do we want to throw out our ability to let the voices be heard through
elections?”
As with
bills passed in other states, voting rights groups said the new provisions in
Texas, if passed, would be likely to disproportionately affect poorer people
and those of color.
“All the
provisions have an impact on minorities one way or another,” Gilberto Hinojosa,
the chair of the Texas Democratic Party, said on Sunday. “That’s what it’s
intended to. They’re not trying to stop Republicans from going out to vote.
They’re trying to stop Democrats from going out to vote and the base of the
Democratic Party is overwhelmingly African-American and Hispanic.”
Republicans
in the Legislature had defended the bill, falsely arguing that it contained no
restrictions on voting and saying that it was part of a yearslong effort to
strengthen election security in the state. Even so, they acknowledged that
there was no widespread voting fraud last year in Texas, and the Republican
secretary of state testified that the state’s election was “smooth and secure.”
“This isn’t
about who won or who lost, it’s really to make the process better,” State
Senator Bryan Hughes, one of the Republican sponsors of the bill, said in an
interview this month. “We want to make the elections more accessible and more
secure, make them smoother.”
Briscoe
Cain, the sponsor of the bill in the House, said late Sunday that the bill was
meant to ensure that “conduct of elections be uniform and consistent throughout
the state, to reduce the likelihood of fraud and the conduct of elections, to
protect the secrecy the ballot, promote voter access and ensure that all
legally cast ballots are counted.”
Voting
rights groups have long pointed to Texas as one of the hardest states in the
country for voters to cast ballots. One recent study by Northern Illinois University
ranked Texas last in an index measuring the difficulty of voting. The report
cited a host of factors, including a drastic reduction of polling stations in
some parts of the state and strict voter identification laws.
David
Montgomery contributed reporting from Austin, Texas. Reporting was also
contributed by Austin Ramzy and Anna Schaverien.
Nick
Corasaniti covers national politics. He was one of the lead reporters covering
Donald Trump's campaign for president in 2016 and has been writing about
presidential, congressional, gubernatorial and mayoral campaigns for The Times
since 2011. @NYTnickc • Facebook
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