Texas Republicans are moving to change the rules dictating how many members must be present to conduct business after Democrats successfully blocked a voting reform bill by fleeing the state and denying the Legislature a quorum.
Their efforts come as Republican Gov. Greg Abbott notched a victory on Tuesday as the state Supreme Court ruled Democrats could be detained and brought to the state Capitol to participate in the latest special legislative session. A judge in Austin issued an order on Sunday shielding the Texas Democrats from arrest if they returned to the Lone Star State after the Democrats filed a lawsuit to prevent the possibility.
BREAKING DOWN THE TEXAS VOTING BILL THAT DEMOCRATS FLED THE STATE TO BLOCK
The Democrats have spent several weeks in Washington, D.C., running out the clock on the previous special session to stop Republicans from passing the voting reform bill. That session ended Aug. 6, but Abbott immediately convened a new one that began on Aug. 7.
Abbott published his agenda for the new special session on Thursday, and it included much of the same legislation as the previous session.
However, a new item at the end of the list could prevent a similar situation from unfolding in the future.
The item called for action on “legislation relating to legislative quorum requirements.”
Texas’s Constitution lays out the rules regarding quorum, which require at least two-thirds of the state House and Senate to be present to pass laws. House Democrats exploited that requirement earlier this year when they walked out of the building during the final night of the regular legislative session. They later fled the state on private jets to block a quorum when Abbott called a special session.
A Texas Senate committee advanced a bill on Monday that would reduce the number of lawmakers needed to conduct business, which would dramatically reduce state Democrats’ ability to use the same move in the future.
The measure would present the question to voters on the November ballot, asking them to approve a constitutional amendment that waters down the quorum rules.
According to the text of the bill, the question will ask whether to pass an amendment “to provide that a majority of the members of the senate or house of representatives of the Texas Legislature constitutes a quorum for that house to do business.”
Mark Jones, political science professor at Rice University in Houston, said the effort is unlikely to pass the Legislature — unless Democrats commit a “strategic error.”
“In some ways, it’s a smart move by the governor, in [that] if the Democrats don’t show up in full force, they would not be able to block it,” Jones said.
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Jones said the bill would likely pass if state Democrats were “present enough to provide quorum, but not present enough to block the two-thirds majority” needed to advance a ballot question on the quorum rules. Constitutional amendment questions must pass by a two-thirds majority.
The voting rights legislation Democrats fought to stop is also on the agenda for the special session. It would ban some of the pandemic-era voting practices adopted by some precincts in 2020, such as drive-thru voting and 24-hour voting, while adding new identification requirements to absentee voting.
