The Texas Republicans voted to find and stop the more than 50 Democratic legislators who fled the state to prevent a vote on a controversial redistribution plan which would considerably promote the Conservatives.
The vote was adopted from 85 to 6 and came after the Republican Governor Greg Abbott threatened with corruption against absent democrats.
After the vote, the governor ordered the soldiers of the State to “locate, arrest and return to the Chamber of the Chamber of any member who abandoned his duty towards Texans”.
The Congress map proposed, unveiled last week by the Republicans, would create more republican seats in the House of American Representatives of Washington DC where they currently have a thin majority.
At least two thirds of the State Legislative Body of 150 members must be present to vote. The quorum has become inaccessible that more than 50 Democratic legislators have left the state.
Texas House President Dustin Burrows told journalists after the vote he had “signed the civil arrest mandates” for the Democrats.
Most of the Democrats fled to Illinois where the governor of the State JB Pritzker said that he was going to do everything we could to protect each of them “in the midst of Abbott’s arrest threats.
The Democrats said they planned to stay far from Texas for two weeks until the end of a special legislative session.
“We will do everything you need. What it looks like, we don’t know,” said Gene Wu, the chief of the Texas House Democrat.
Monday’s vote is mainly symbolic, according to Texas Tribune, because the mandates only apply in state lines.
This decision empowers the chamber sergeant and state soldiers to arrest the absent legislators and deliver them to the State Capitol building in Austin.
They would not face any civil or criminal accusation following the mandate, reports the newspaper.
Republican governor Greg Abbott warned earlier than legislators who refuse to return to vote on the map could face crime accusations in the second degree.
“It would be a corruption if a legislator took money to play or refuse to perform an act in the legislative assembly,” said Abbott on Fox News on Monday. “And the reports are that these legislators both sought money and offered money to jump the vote, to leave the legislative assembly, to adopt a legislative act. It would be corruption.”
After the legislators voted to issue mandates against the Democrats, Abbott published a declaration ordering to the Ministry of Public Security of Texas “to locate, arrest and return to the Chamber of the Chamber, any member who abandoned their obligation to the Texans”.
He added that his order will remain in force “until all the members of the missing Democratic Chamber are counted and brought to the Capitol of Texas”.
Texas Ken Paxton’s prosecutor general, a Republican, also threatened to have democratic leaders arrested.
Paxton, who is currently presenting himself to the American Senate, wrote on X that the State should “use each tool at our disposal to track down those who think they are above the law”.
At the federal level in Washington, the Republicans of Texas currently hold 25 out of the 38 seats of the State Congress.
They hope that the new cards could increase this number to 30 – all in the constituencies that President Donald Trump won last November by at least 10 points.
Trump’s party currently has 219 of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives of the United States, while the Democrats hold 212. Rediscussing could help win the thin republican majority in the Chamber, which is the lower room of the Congress.
Republicans and Democrats have been accused of manipulating the borders of an electoral district – commonly known as Gerrymandering.
Some Democratic leaders in other states have suggested that they could restart their own legislative cards to counter the losses of seats offered in Texas.
New York governor Kathy Hochul said she explored a constitutional amendment to increase the calendar to redraw the legislative lines of her state.
New York – as well as California, Colorado and Washington – attributes redistribution to independent non -partisan commissions, rather than state legislatures.
States generally suffer a redistribution every 10 years, when the voting cards are redesigned to take into account changes in population.
The most recent American census took place in 2020. Retigating the district lines in the middle of a decade is unusual.
