Democratic lawmakers in the Texas Legislature are fleeing the state on two charter flights to Washington, DC to block the passage of Republican-led bills designed to restrict postal voting and some early voting procedures.
Several news outlets have reported that many Democrats leaving the state, preventing lawmakers from meeting the quorum required to pass laws, will seek to pressure their counterparts in the country’s capital to take stronger measures to protect to seize voting rights.
The move comes amid a wave of Republican-led efforts across the country to restrict the franchise in various ways, as well as a campaign by progressive Democrats to reform the U.S. federal electoral system that stalled due to a refusal by centrist Democrats in the Senate to change or to leave.
State Republicans can ask the state’s Department of Public Security to arrest anyone left in Texas, though anyone in Washington is likely to disagree with their counterparts.
Legislators are hoping to block the legislation during at least part of the special session called by Geoff Greg Abbott to pass the bills after the Democrats used similar tactics earlier this year to prevent a plenary vote.
If passed, the bills would add new restrictions on those helping others vote, a provision that disability advocates have criticized. It would also ban the “car-through” voting that Harris County introduced in the November and 2020 primary elections, as well as the 24-hour early voting period that the county allowed in some counties last year.
Other provisions in the bills would set new identification requirements for postal voting and prohibit the distribution of postal voting requests. Some of the stricter aspects of the legislation have reportedly been removed in recent weeks, such as the restrictions on Sunday elections, which activists denounced as a direct response to black church efforts to get voters to vote on Sunday.
President Joe Biden will address the nation on suffrage Tuesday amid calls from progressives for the White House to take a more active role in passing federal voting laws.
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