Democratic State Senator Carol Alvarado of Houston took to the floor last night around six, and speaking very slowly, read letters from constituents about the challenges many, especially minority voters have faced voting.
SMU political scientist Cal Jillson says her timing is off. "It probably won't make a difference in the long term and I'm not sure why she would want to do it before there is a quorum restored in the Texas House.
Until the house is in session, he says it really doesn't matter what the state senate does.
He says what senator Alvarado is trying to do is join the Texas House in making a point "raising issues about the Republican's voter integrity bill and trying to rally public opinion against it. She can't stop the bill, but she can raise hell about the bill."
Holding a filibuster is not an easy thing to do. The filibuster in Texas is different than it is in the United State Senate. Jillson calls it a "painful exercise." He says "In Texas, as an individual senator, you have to stand at your desk, not lean on anything or have any other means of support and talk on the topic which you're filibustering until you can no longer do it. Then the filibuster is over, you can't hand it off."
In modern times in the US senate, he says all you have to do is say you're going to filibuster a bill and then they move on to something else.
Wendy Davis famously filibustered the state senate, for 11 hours, to stop the passage of an Republican backed abortion bill in 2013. "There was a similar filibuster in 1977 when senator Bill Meier of Hurst spoke for 43 hours, which is the longest anyone has ever spoken maybe in the history of the world, let alone the history of the Texas senate."
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