The Constitution gives the power to regulate elections primarily to the States, not the federal government.
Also, you want to “right-size” the Court so that you get YOUR preferred outcome. Not cool, un-American, and it will eventually bite your side in the ass, hard.
True, but Congress may override the election rules the states make:
The Texas Democrats figured out what to do.
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Nevertheless, by traveling en masse to Washington, the Texas Democrats were hoping to apply pressure to Democrats in the U.S. Senate who so far have been unable to pass federal legislation to address the issue.“We have to decide if we are going to stand for democracy,” said State Representative Trey Martinez Fischer, who organized the effort to leave the state. “We want the nation to join us and we want the U.S. Senate to hear us and act.”
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This is great. The eyes of Texas are upon Republicans.
Did they? How did that work out for the Wisconsin democrats who fled to Illinois in an attempt to avoid a quorum. Answer: The Wisconsin Budget Repair bill passed anyway.
You can’t apply the quorum rules in one state legislature to that of another. In each state, it depends on the specifics of the state’s constitution or the rules of the legislative house in question. For example, the Republicans in Oregon have been able to stymie bills they don’t like by leaving the state.
Did you see this part of what I posted?
“We want the nation to join us and we want the U.S. Senate to hear us and act.”
I believe they know they can’t BLOCK the bill forever. They’re drawing attention to the situation.
Here’s where someone will usually complain about the time and/or manner of the protesting, and suggest (or demand) that only approved protests should be allowed.
Ultimately, this will be a futile effort. Abbott can call special session after special session until enough Ds are forced to return. They are all part-time legislators with actual jobs and families to attend to, and staying out of the state for 16 months until the next election is out of the cards.
But it is heartening to see House Ds (unlike their colleagues in the Senate) fighting back.
Democratic lawmakers in Texas fled the state on Monday, potentially torpedoing an ongoing special session called by Republicans to take up new voting restrictions and drawing threats of arrest by Gov. Greg Abbott.
…Abbott said Monday that the Democrats could face arrest for the quorum-busting maneuver when they return to the state, adding that he plans to continue to call new special sessions until the legislature takes up the voting bills and other measures.
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On what grounds? What law are they breaking?
Interesting WaPo reader comment:
Reminder that Greg Abbott and Texas Republicans didn’t call special session after 23 Texans were murdered by a white supremacist in El Paso, or after 700 Texans died when Texas’ crappy private power grid failed, but now they’re holding a special session just to make it harder for Dem constituencies to vote after finding only 16 false addresses on registration forms out of 11 million votes in 2020.
Gotta have priorities; amirite?
The arrest would only be for the purposes of escorting then to the House chamber. Like the US Senate, rules allow members to be compelled to attend the session if there’s no quorum.
My bold.
I believe you, but I’d like to see a cite if you can find one. I’m interested in the specific language without using the passive voice. IOW who is empowered to compel them?
This is the hope:
Democratic members of the Texas House of Representatives stood in front of the U.S. House in Washington Tuesday, blocking action on a GOP-sponsored voting measure in Texas that they say amounts to voter suppression. The lawmakers also urged members of Congress and President Biden to act to preserve voting rights nationwide.
President Biden is to address the issue later in the day in Pennsylvania.
…The U.S. House has approved the For The People Act, which would provide federal protections to voters, but it has stalled in the Senate.
…U.S. Rep Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, called on President Biden to act to preserve voting rights. “What we really need today is a Lyndon Johnson moment,” Doggett said, referring the the Texan Johnson’s signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
“We need the president and the vice president and every Democrat in this Senate working together to preserve American democracy,” Doggett said.
U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, dismissed the lawmakers’ move as a “political stunt.”
“Rather than do their jobs in Texas, yesterday House Democrats abandoned both our state and the millions of Texans that they represent,” Cornyn said on the Senate floor, noting that other legislation besides voting is also now stalled.
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Cornyn, how about you STFU.
The language from the House rules below:
All absentees for whom no sufficient excuse is made may, by order of a majority of those present, be sent for and arrested, wherever they may be found, by the sergeant-at-arms or an officer appointed by the sergeant-at-arms for that purpose, and their attendance shall be secured and retained. The house shall determine on what conditions they shall be discharged.
So the authority lies with the House Sergeant-at-arms, but he may delegate that authority. And the Texas House voted to compel attendance earlier today.
Thanks. Getting interesting now…
And “Cancun” Cruz is bitching about this. Cruz, I think you should sit this one out. They’re leaving the state to protect voting rights. You left the state to relax on a Mexican beach.
More on the Democrats’ exodus:
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And a number of House Republicans indicated that they would support what’s known as a call of the House, a procedural move that would allow law enforcement to track down lawmakers who have already fled the chamber.It’s unclear though what impact such an order could have, given that Democrats have flown to Washington, D.C. where Texas law enforcement does not have jurisdiction.
…The last time the Democrats broke quorum and fled the state in 2003, Texas Republicans asked the attorneys general in Oklahoma and New Mexico if Texas troopers could arrest the lawmakers in their states without a warrant and bring them back to Texas. Both states said no.
…But [Jon] Taylor [a political scientist at the University of Texas at San Antonio] said even if Democrats can’t stop the elections bill, they can still bring attention to their cause.
“The point is to get it across to voters, to Congress, to the nation because this is not just something happening in Texas, it’s happening in other red states,” he said. “We see it in Georgia, Florida, we’ve seen it in Oklahoma and we’ll probably see it in other states.”
Still, the maneuver is a calculated risk.
“You’re already seeing it,” Taylor said. “[Democrats are] viewed as heroes on the Democrat side and the focus of all evil on Republican side.”
So what else is new?
If we reach that point, I don’t think that federal legislation is going to be enough. At that point it comes down to the supreme court deciding whether or not they want the country to be a democracy. If they do want a democracy then any provision that says ignore the election let the statehouse decide is going to be overturned. If they don’t like democracy then they can just declare the federal legislation unconstitutional. However even without packing the court I think ignoring the results of the election is a bridge too far even for a lopsided conservative court. As evidence I give the umpteen lawsuits that Trump tried all of which went nowhere.
Those lawsuits went nowhere because they didn’t comport with the laws. Republicans have packed the courts; now they are free to re-write the laws to comport with their fantasies.