On Sunday, May 30, 2021, the Democrats of the Texas House of Representatives left the House floor before the Republican majority’s final deadline to pass its sweeping voting bill. Of the 150 seats in the state’s House, Democrats only hold 67. But the Lone Star State’s legislature requires a quorum, which is a minimum number of present representatives required for legislation to be discussed and voted on. Even though only a simple majority of votes – which Republicans have – is required to pass legislation in the Texas House, the legislative body is essentially paralyzed without at least ⅔ of its legislators present in the chamber. This means that the absence of at least 51 representatives can hold up the legislative process. Texas Democrats had last broken quorum in 2003 to protest the effort to redistrict Texas congressional seats in a way that favored Republicans. The issue that has led to the new breaking of quorum, voting rights, has created controversy not only in Texas, but nationwide, even reaching the United States Congress.

After former Republican President Donald Trump responded to the 2020 Presidential election results with unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud, 14 Republican-controlled states, including the recent swing states of Iowa, Georgia, Florida, and Arizona, have enacted sweeping laws with the stated aim of tightening election security. Shortly after signing the Sunshine State’s bill, Florida Republican Governor Ron Desantis declared that the new legislation ensured each “vote is going to be cast with integrity and transparency.” However, many Americans remain opposed to the new voting bills, claiming that the bills’ requirement of Voter Identification, reduction of early voting hours, and limitation of mail voting are all aimed to disenfranchise targeted demographics and ensure Republicans’ reelection. Democrats have urged the federal government to pass legislation preserving the increased access to voting that the Covid-19 pandemic had brought on.

Although Democratic President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice sued the state of Georgia over their voting law on June 25, prominent Democrats still tout the passage of a federal voting rights bill as the best way to stop the nationwide contraction of voting access. Democratic Georgia Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock delivered a bold rebuke on Twitter of Georgia Republicans’ efforts to seize control of Fulton county elections: “This proposed power grab is undemocratic and deeply concerning. We must pass federal voting rights legislation to ensure we see fair elections where every eligible voter has the chance to make their voice heard.” Democratic legislators and public figures have called for the passage of the For the People Act (H.R.1/S.1), which would expand voting opportunities and put an end to partisan gerrymandering, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act (H.R.4), which would prohibit future discriminatory voting laws.

In Washington, Democrats possess a governing trifecta, meaning control over the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives. However, the advancement of controversial legislation has been made difficult by several factors. While the double Democratic victories in the January 5, 2021 Georgia Senate runoff elections give Democrats a narrow 50-50 “majority” thanks to the tie breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris, legislation has continued to face obstacles.

The filibuster, a parliamentary procedure in the United States Senate that gained popularity in the mid-20th century, allows for the endless debate of a bill until it has received 60 votes. Effectively, this means that Democrats need the support of 10 Republicans to pass legislation; however, a simple majority (50 votes and a tie breaking vote) can be cast to eliminate the filibuster.

While some Democrats have been eager to gut the filibuster in order to pass sweeping policy changes with their governing trifecta, others have remained more hesitant. Senators Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) have emerged as the main Democratic defenders of the old Senate tradition. Manchin has argued that the elimination of the filibuster would set a “new and dangerous precedent… to pass sweeping, partisan legislation that changes the direction of our nation every time there is a change in political control.” The lack of unified Democratic support for the elimination of the filibuster has prevented either of the federal voting rights bills from being passed, as Republicans have shown no interest in expanding voting opportunities on the federal level.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has expressed the importance of minority “protections” that prevent the majority party from having complete control over the legislative process. Because the filibuster requires 60 votes for bills to be passed, bipartisanship has been all but necessary in the polarized era of slim Senate majorities. The talk of minority legislative protections is ironically similar to the situation in the Texas legislature. In the United States Senate, Republicans, the minority party, used the filibuster to prevent Democratic bills from passing without ⅗ of the chamber’s votes. In the Texas House of Representatives, the minority Democrats broke the quorum of ⅔ members present to prevent Republican bills from passing. The opposing political parties have used fundamentally similar parliamentary procedures, the filibuster and the quorum, to exert minority control over legislation.

When Governor Greg Abbott (R-TX) began a special session to ensure the passage of the Republican voting restrictions bill, 51 Democrats fled the state to Washington D.C. In order for quorum to be met, ⅔ of the legislative body needs only to be in the chamber, meaning that Abbott could pass the bill by using state police to force Democratic representatives to come to work. However, Texas state forces have no jurisdiction in the nation’s capital, so the Texas House Democrats hope to wait in the District of Columbia until the special session’s end on August 6.

Ironically, the significance of Texas Democrats’ choice of Washington as their destination was that they hoped to speak with Congressional leaders to secure the passage of federal voting rights legislation, which would almost certainly require the elimination of the filibuster. Harris has met with the Texas Democrats, calling them “American patriots” and their efforts “courageous.” House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) has not only met with Texas representatives but has also publicly called for President Biden to promote the carving out of the filibuster for the passage of voting rights. Texas Democrats hope that they can hold out long enough in Washington to block the passage of Texas Republicans’ voting restrictions bill while also convincing conservative Democrats Manchin and Sinema to cast aside the filibuster. Democrats want to use federal legislation to counteract voting restrictions on the state level.

In the fight for voting rights, both sides have assumed hypocritical positions. Democratic leaders like Clyburn and Harris call for filibuster reform while the Vice President praises the Texas Democrats’ “courageous” use of their minority powers, something Democrats criticize Republicans for using in the U.S. Senate. Conversely, Republicans have defended the filibuster as an essential part of the Senate while Governor Abbott claims that by breaking quorum and using their minority influence, Democrats fail to do “the job they were elected to do.”

In order for Democrats to pass substantive federal voting reform, they must eliminate the parliamentary procedure similar to that which enabled them to block Abbott’s bill in the first place. While McConnell vows to obstruct Biden’s federal agenda, announcing that “one hundred percent of [his] focus is on stopping this new administration” with the filibuster, Republicans claim the Texas Democrats’ obstructionist use of their minority power is a dereliction of duty.

Democrats promote the importance of federal voting reform but they have gone about it without picking a clear side on the debate over minority power in the legislature. The party has defended the minority protections of Democrats in the Texas House while using the same argument of voting rights to oppose Republicans’ federal legislative obstruction.

Ultimately, the true power lies with Senators Manchin and Sinema. They will decide the fate of American voting rights. But more significantly, the two moderate senators will decide whether or not American politics should give significant power to the minority party, a decision both the Democratic and Republican Parties continue to avoid making.