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AUSTIN, Texas (AP) – A Texas state senator continued her filibuster Thursday morning with an electoral law in the latest tactic to prolong the nation’s most visible stalemate over voting rights.
Democrat Carol Alvarado started her filibuster just before 6 p.m. on Wednesday by speaking indefinitely, though she admitted it likely wasn’t going to stop. She has to stand and speak during the filibuster, which went into its twelfth hour on Thursday morning.
Alvarado wore running shoes in the Senate – much like former lawmaker Wendy Davis, who was known for her long filibuster of an anti-abortion law in 2013.
Alvarado’s filibuster started hours after Texas House officials issued arrest warrants for more than 50 absent Democrats on Wednesday. Frustrated Republicans have stepped up efforts to end a 32-day stalemate over a comprehensive electoral law.
But after the NCOs finished their rounds at the Texas Capitol – leaving copies of the arrest warrants in the Democratic offices and politely asking staff to tell their bosses to please return – there were few signs of the stalemate that began when the Democrats fled to Washington, DC in July to bring the statehouse to a standstill, was closer to a solution.
The recent escalation plunged the Texan legislature into unusual territory, with neither side sure of what comes next or how far Republicans could go in their determination to reach a quorum of 100 legislators in attendance – a threshold they only four Members did not reach.
“I’m not worried about things that I can’t control,” said State MP Erin Zwiener, one of the Democrats convicted on an arrest warrant and refused to return to the Capitol. “Nothing about these warrants comes as a surprise, and they don’t necessarily affect my plans.”
Democrats, recognizing that they cannot permanently halt the GOP voting law due to Republican dominance in both houses of the Texas legislature, responded to the warrants with new demonstrations of defiance. One showed up in a Houston courtroom and obtained a court order to prevent him from being forced to return to the Capitol.
The NAACP also stepped in on behalf of the Texas Democrats, calling on the Justice Department to investigate whether a federal crime had been committed when the Republicans threatened arrest.
Refusing to attend parliamentary sessions is a violation of House Rules – a civil offense, not a criminal one, and leaves the warrants’ powers to bring Democrats back to the Chamber unclear, even to the Republicans who invoked it. Democrats would not be jailed. Republican Travis Clardy, who helped negotiate an early version of the voting bill that the Democrats first stopped with a strike in May, told ABC News he believed “they can be physically brought back to the Capitol.”
State Rep. Jim Murphy, who heads the Texas House’s Republican caucus, said although he hadn’t experienced a situation like this during his tenure, he believed officials could go to the missing lawmakers and ask them to come back.
“I hope they’ll come because the warrants are out and they don’t want to be arrested,” Murphy said. “To me it is incredible that you have to arrest people to do the job they fought for and for which they took the oath of office to uphold the Texas constitution.”
The Texas Department of Public Safety, the state’s law enforcement agency, referred questions about the warrants to the Speaker of the House.
The move marks a new attempt by the GOP to end the protest against the electoral law that began a month ago when 50 Democrats took private jets to Washington to make Texas the front line of a new national struggle for the right to vote.
Republicans are now in the middle of their third attempt since May to pass a series of tweaks and changes to the state’s electoral law that would make it more difficult – and sometimes even legally risky – to cast a vote in Texas that already has some to the most restrictive electoral laws in the country.
Texas is one of several states where Republicans have rushed to introduce new voting restrictions in response to former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 elections were stolen. The current bill is similar to the one the Democrats blocked last month when they went to the country’s capital. Among other things, it would ban 24-hour polling stations, drive-thru voting and give party election observers more access.
On Wednesday, it was unclear how many Democrats had stayed in Washington, where they had hoped to get President Joe Biden and other Democrats to pass federal laws that would protect voting rights in Texas and beyond. Senate Democrats have promised to make this the first order of business when they return this fall, despite lacking a clear strategy for overcoming staunch Republican opposition.
The Associated Press contributed to this development report.
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