Texas Democrats fled state to block GOP voting restrictions. Will it make a difference?

Armed with little more than a case of Miller Lite, Democrats in the Texas state House fled for Washington, D.C., on Monday in the hopes of blocking their Republican counterparts' effort to enact new voting restrictions in the state.

Per The Texas Tribune, at least 51 of the 67 Democratic representatives ditched a special legislative session in Austin with 26 days left to go and hopped on two planes headed for the nation's capital. In doing so, they broke quorum, meaning there won't be enough members present to conduct business under House rules when the chamber reconvenes Tuesday. The party already did something similar this year when the voting legislation was previously up for a vote, though they didn't cross state in lines in that instance.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.