AUSTIN, Texas —
A Democratic Texas state senator ended a 15-hour filibuster Thursday morning of a controversial Republican-backed voting bill, which then passed just minutes after she wearily left the floor.
Democrat Carol Alvarado began speaking shortly before 6 p.m. Wednesday even though she acknowledged that the filibuster would not block the sweeping legislation. She was required to remain standing and speaking, was prohibited from taking bathroom breaks and wore running shoes on the Senate floor, just as former Texas legislator Wendy Davis did in 2013 when she filibustered a sweeping anti-abortion bill.
“What’s wrong with drive-thru voting during a pandemic? What’s wrong with 24-hour voting? Why can’t we have expanded voting hours for the people who have to work late? Where is all the so-called fraud?” Alvarado said in the closing moments of her filibuster. “Where does it end?
She hugged her Democratic colleagues after finally putting down the microphone. Minutes later, the bill passed 18-11 in the Senate, although the measure is now once again stalled since Democratic lawmakers continue to stay away from the state House of Representatives in a standoff that has now entered a 32nd day.
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Alvarado’s filibuster began hours after officers of the Texas House of Representatives delivered civil arrest warrants for more than 50 absent Democrats. Frustrated Republicans have ratcheted up their efforts to end a standoff over the elections bill.
But after sergeants-at-arms finished dropping off copies of the warrants at Democrats’ offices in the Capitol and politely asking staff members to tell their bosses to return, there were few signs that the stalemate, which began when Democrats fled en masse to Washington in July to grind the statehouse to a halt, was any closer to a resolution.
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The latest escalation threw the Texas Legislature into unfamiliar territory. Neither side has shown any certainty over what comes next, or it’s unclear how far Republicans can go to secure a quorum of 100 present lawmakers — a threshold they are just four members shy of reaching
“I don’t worry about things I can’t control,” said state Rep. Erin Zwiener, one of the Democrats who was served with a warrant and has refused to return to the Capitol. “Nothing about these warrants are a surprise, and they don’t necessarily affect my plans.”
Democrats, who acknowledge that they cannot indefinitely stop the GOP voting bill from passing because of Republicans’ dominance in both chambers of the Texas Legislature, responded to the warrants with new shows of defiance. One turned up in a Houston courtroom and secured a court order aimed at preventing him from being forced to return to the Capitol.
The NAACP also stepped in on behalf of the Texas Democrats, urging the Justice Department to investigate whether a federal crime was being committed when Republicans threatened to have them arrested.
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Refusing to attend legislative sessions is a violation of Texas House rules — a civil offense, not a criminal one, leaving unclear the power of the warrants to get Democrats back to the chamber. Although the fugitive Democrats would not be jailed, Republican Travis Clardy, who helped negotiate an early version of the voting bill that Democrats first stopped with a walkout in May, told ABC News that he believed “they can be physically brought back to the Capitol.”
State Rep. Jim Murphy, who leads the Texas House Republican Caucus, said his understanding was that officers could go to the missing lawmakers and ask them to come back.
“I am hoping they will come because the warrants have been issued and they don’t want to be arrested,” Murphy said. “It is incredible to me that you have to arrest people to do the job they campaigned for, for which they took an 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 House speaker.
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Republicans are now in the midst of their third attempt since May to pass a raft of tweaks and changes to the state’s election code that would make it harder — and even, sometimes, legally riskier — to cast a ballot in Texas, which already has some of the most restrictive election laws in the nation.
Texas is among several states where Republicans have rushed to enact new voting restrictions in response to former President Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. It would ban 24-hour polling locations, drive-through voting and give partisan poll watchers more access, among other things.
It was unclear Wednesday how many Texas Democratic lawmakers remained in Washington, where they had hoped to push President Biden and fellow Democrats to pass federal legislation that would protect voting rights in Texas and beyond. Senate Democrats pledged to make it the first order of business when they returned in the fall, even though they don’t have a clear strategy for overcoming steadfast Republican opposition.