Dems bring Texas Senate to halt with filibuster of GOP elections bill

AUSTIN, Texas -- The GOP voting restrictions push that left the Texas House scrambling to round up absent Democrats also shut down work in the Texas Senate Wednesday evening as state Sen. Carol Alvarado launched into a filibuster against the GOP’s priority voting bill.

"I rise today to speak against Senate Bill 1," Alvarado said, beginning her filibuster just before 5:50 p.m. CT as the chamber approached a final vote on the target of the Houston Democrat's efforts.

Though Democrats are outnumbered in the chamber, they are occasionally able to foil legislation by speaking on it indefinitely — usually ahead of a key deadline or the end of the legislative session. Alvarado's filibuster, however, will likely end up being more of a symbolic gesture than a credible attempt to block passage of the bill. The Legislature is on just the fifth day of a 30-day special session, called as Democrats have left the House without enough members present for the Republican majority in that chamber to pass legislation.

Ahead of her filibuster, Alvarado told The Texas Tribune she would be using a “tool in our box that is a Senate tradition” just as House Democrats were using their quorum break to block the bill and vowed to keep going "as long as I have the energy."

“I’m using what I have at my disposal in the Senate,” Alvarado said, acknowledging the bill would eventually pass in the Senate. “The filibuster isn’t going to stop it, but a filibuster is also used to put the brakes on an issue — to call attention to what is at stake — and that is what I am doing.”

To sustain the filibuster, Alvarado must stand on the Senate floor, without leaning on her desk or chair, and speak continuously. If she strays off topic, her effort can be shut down after a series of points of order.

SB 1 is the Senate’s revived effort to restrict voting by forbidding local officials from taking various steps to make voting more accessible, and further tightening the vote-by-mail process. SB 1 is nearly identical to legislation the Senate approved in the first special session, and is opposed by Democratic lawmakers, civil rights groups and advocates for people with disabilities who have raised concerns the bill would limit access and suppress marginalized voters.

“We’re talking about [it being] easy to vote, hard to cheat, and that’s what this bill is about,” state Sen. Bryan Hughes, the Mineola Republican who authored the legislation, said earlier in the day when the Senate gave initial approval to SB 1 on a 18-11 party-line vote. “It cracks down on those vote harvesters, those paid political operatives who try to coerce voters, who try to mislead voters, who try to get in between the voter and her ballot. We will not have that in Texas.”

Pushed under Texas Republicans’ mantle of “election integrity,” SB 1 enhances partisan poll watchers’ freedoms inside polling locations and sets new rules — and possible criminal penalties — for those who assist voters, including those with disabilities, in casting their ballots.

Republicans have pushed forward with those changes even as advocates for people with disabilities have continued to warn that the wording of SB 1 risks disenfranchising the voters who lawmakers claim they want to protect by limiting the assistance voters with disabilities could receive and potentially subjecting those helping them to increased penalties for mistakes. There also remains no evidence that fraud occurs on a widespread scale in Texas.

"When has a crackdown on voter harvesters become voter suppression?" said state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston. "Who wants voter harvesters? Why would we tolerate it? We shouldn't."

Hughes has also defended the bill by noting it would allot extra time for voting. SB 1 adds one extra hour of required early voting hours, increasing it from 8 hours to 9 hours per day, and lowers the population threshold for counties required to provide at least 12 hours of voting during the second week of early voting in state elections.

But the bill would also outlaw local voting options like the 24-hour voting and drive-thru voting efforts championed in Alvarado’s home county, Harris County, even though the top elections official for the Texas Secretary of State has told lawmakers he is not aware of evidence of fraud tied to those initiatives.

Those prohibitions have piqued particular outrage by Democrats and voting rights advocates because Harris County has indicated the initiatives were particularly successful in reaching voters of color.

"Although provisions of this bill would make voting easier for some Texans, it simultaneously would make it harder for historically disenfranchised communities of color to participate in elections," said state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo. "If Senate Bill 1 is passed, it will result in communities of color having fewer opportunities."

She pointed out how the bill's new window for early voting — between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. — would curtail the extended hours offered in some of the state's largest counties during the 2020 election where "approximately one of three Black Texans, one of three Latino Texans and one of three Asian Texans live."

Ahead of the chamber's preliminary vote on the bill earlier Wednesday, Hughes did accept a series of amendments that addressed at least one line of concerns raised by voting rights advocates.

In what appears to be a concession to Democrats who have pushed for its creation, SB 1 includes language to allow for a new correction process for mail-in ballots that would ordinarily be rejected because of a missing signature or an endorsement a local review board determines does not belong to the voter who returned the ballot. The Senate signed off on an amendment to allow voters to address those issues online instead of requiring them to visit their county election’s office in person.

The chamber also added an amendment to allow that curing process to cover the new ID requirements the bill creates for Texans voting by mail. SB 1 requires those voters to provide their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number on applications for mail-in ballots and the envelopes used to return their ballots. For their votes to be counted, that information must match the person's voter file.

The bill also prohibits local election officials from sending unsolicited applications to request a mail-in ballot, even to voters 65 and older who automatically qualify to vote by mail, or providing applications to local groups helping to get out the vote. Political parties would still be able to send out unsolicited applications on their own dime.

The eventual passage of SB 1 in the Senate is expected to be the latest strike in Republicans’ struggle to clamp down on the state’s voting process, which has now extended into a second round of legislative overtime amid the Democrats’ blockade in the House.