Texas House GOP Sends Law Enforcement To Find Democrats Who Fled State Over Voter Law

Texas House Republicans on Tuesday agreed to send state police to track down the 58 Democratic lawmakers who left Austin to block restrictive Republican voting laws from being passed.

Republican lawmakers in Texas are currently advancing two voting bills that would prohibit voting procedures like drive-through voting and 24-hour voting and require a stricter identification process.

Republicans had found on Tuesday morning that they lack a two-thirds quorum required to vote on these bills. The GOP lawmakers have voted to send law enforcement instead to hunt down the missing Democrats, ordering officers even to arrest them if necessary. Texas law enforcement would not have jurisdiction outside of the state, however.

This move left Texas Republicans furious, including Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas), who vehemently proclaimed that the Democrats who fled the state “will be arrested.”

“What the law is, it’s in the Constitution, and that is the House, the state House of Representatives, who were here in the Capitol, in Austin right now, they do have the ability to issue a call to have their fellow members who are not showing up to be arrested, but only so long as that arrest is made in the state of Texas,” Abbott said on Fox News. “That’s why they have fled the state.”