I hate to ever be in a position to even slightly defend Ted Cruz, but he’s not completely off-base here. The Texas constitution gives the House the authority to use state police to physically compel the attendance of members, and whether that counts as an “arrest” seems like a bit of hair-splitting. An arrest doesn’t necessarily mean that someone is going to be criminally charged. Part of any arrest can involve restraints if the subject resists, although I’d be surprised if handcuffs and leg irons were broken out for state Representatives.
The “Oregon Senator” case they mention is great though, it was Senator Bob Packwood (of rampant sexual misconduct fame) when Republicans were trying to force an adjournment by ignoring a quorum call. They were all hiding out in their offices and Packwood was the one that they managed to catch. He didn’t put up a fight, but when they got to the Senate he requested as a matter of principle that he be carried across the threshold so that he did not voluntarily return to the chamber.
We’ll at least one Texas House Democrat who fled is apparently back in Austin and “in talks” with the Republican sponsor of the elections bill. Between their lack of a game plan and the fact that they keep coming down with COVID, I’m afraid this is going to become (another) debacle for Texas Democrats.
Not intentional, but somehow emblematic of the bumbling Keystone Cops routine that this is turning into. There’s now apparently a group of House Ds who have returned to Austin (how many isn’t clear) to “begin active discussions on improving HB 3 [the elections bill].” House Democrats still in Washington have denounced the move.
My own sense is that Republicans are winning the PR war on the walkout. It’s pretty damn hard to make out that staying in the Washington Plaza Hotel on the party’s dime is some sort of personal sacrifice on behalf of fundamental rights. At least when they did this in the early aughts they had enough sense to stay at a La Quinta in Ardmore, Oklahoma. One Democratic state Rep announced that she was running for Congress from her Plaza hotel room. The optics on all this are terrible.
I’m not sure what thread this goes in, but I don’t want to start another one.
It seems there’s another election audit promulgated by Republican legislators. This one in Fulton County, Pennsylvania. And as in Mariposa County, they caused the election machines in that county to be decertified:
This article mirrors my thinking: Democrats, and democracy, are in serious trouble.
It seems clear that if we don’t eliminate the filibuster and pass meaningful voter protection laws immediately, American democracy will die and by replaced with fascism sometime between 2024 and 2028.
I don’t know if its worth it. I think it is actually rather unlikely that they did alter the machines, it wouldn’t be that easy to do and they don’t seem to be the most sophisticated bunch. Even if they did mess with them it may not be all that easy to detect, and there is no way to prove that they didn’t manipulate them, so all the machines are going to have to be re-certified anyway.
Its not clear to me what is involved in re-certifying a machine, whether they just need to reinstall all the software, swap out some components, do extensive testing on the individual machines, or scrap them entirely. If anyone here has the answer I’d be interested in hearing it.
