House Republicans try pushing controversial election bill through committee without notice

Over a span of four minutes, the House Committee on Elections meeting Thursday morning quickly devolved into shouting matches and chaos after state Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park and chair of the committee, tried to rapidly pass the controversial Senate election bill without listing it on the agenda for the day or holding public testimony, as all attention from the public was on a number of other high-profile committee hearings going on simultaneously.

Right before the committee had to recess to attend the floor session, Cain called up Senate Bill 7, which was not on the meeting's agenda.

At that point, Cain quickly adopted the committee substitute for the bill over loud protests from Democrats on the committee, and called for a vote to send the bill to the Calendars Committee to be scheduled for a hearing on the full floor.

The Republican chair and supporters of the bill argued they could do this without public notice because the committee substitute was identical to House Bill 6, the House version of the Senate election bill minus key provisions, which the committee heard testimony on and passed strictly along party lines earlier this month.

A source explained to CBS Austin this maneuver was technically allowed because the committee would essentially be voting on bill language they already passed. However, even if this bill passes out of the committee and full floor, the original language of SB 7 can still be added to the bill behind closed doors during a conference committee, which is out of the public eye.

Immediately after Cain introduced the committee substitute of SB 7, state Rep. John Bucy III, D-Austin, raised concerns there are too many differences between SB 7 and HB 6 to adopt the committee substitute without having a public hearing, leading to this exchange:

Bucy: "Can you walk us through the committee substitute and all of the changes from SB 7?"

Cain: "Of course. The committee substitute is identical to a bill you voted on recently, a few weeks ago."

Bucy: "Which bill was that?"

Cain: "The bill is House Bill 6."

Bucy: "In full?"

Cain: "In full?"

Bucy: "SB 7 has been gutted."

Cain: "I wouldn't say that, but House Bill 6 is on the bill."

Bucy: "Can I ask in the committee substitute it still has provisions on filming for poll watchers?"

Cain: "The committee substitute is identical to House Bill 6."

Bucy: "Is that a no?"

Cain: "It's identical to House Bill 6. Did House Bill 6 contain that? It did not."

Bucy: "Mr. Chairman, I feel SB 7 is a significant piece of legislation that we should hold a hearing on it."

Cain: "I agree, but we're doing a committee substitute to match it to House Bill 6. We've already done a complete hearing on that exact language?"

Bucy: "So, no? We're not going to have a hearing on it?"

Cain: "We've already heard a hearing on House Bill 6, so that's sufficient."

Senate Bill 7 would limit extended early voting hours, prohibit drive-thru voting, and make it illegal for local election officials to proactively send applications to vote by mail to voters, even if they qualify. The bill also requires all countywide polling locations to have an equal number of voting machines based on number of eligible voters in each House district, which eliminates large voting centers commonly seen in major cities in the state.

As Bucy stated in his exchange with Cain, SB 7 also includes a provision that allows poll watchers to video record activity they deemed suspicious, with senators opposed to this part of the bill expressing concern this could lead to voter intimidation. However, the committee substitute doesn't include this key measure, among other measures, which was the source of sharp divisiveness by bill opponents not willing to let the bill as substituted missing these measures to be discussed and voted on by the full House.

Both election bills have been called "voter suppression" by opponents, who have remarked these limitations will disproportionately affect communities of color.

After the exchange between Bucy and Cain, state Reps. Jessica González, D-Dallas and vice chair of the committee, and Michelle Beckley, D-Carrollton, jumped into the contentious debate.

"These two bills are substantially different. You said that time and time again in committee. You have many times said that these bills are completely different when somebody compared it to SB 7. I have to object. This is wrong. We deserve to have a public hearing on this. So, I'm going to object," González said.

Bill supporter and state Rep. Mike Schofield, R-Katy, echoed Cain's reasoning behind the expedited process, leading to another of a handful of verbal sparring, shown here:

Schofield: "Isn't the language in the committee sub the exact bill we had a 22-hour hearing on?"

González: "We don't know this."

Beckley: "We just got the committee sub seconds ago."

González: "Literally. Come on, man."

Cain: "Well, it's the same thing."

González: "No."

Beckley: "No, it's not. This is absolute crap."

Cain: "It's the same thing. It's okay."

González: "Haven't you said many, many times that your bill is different that SB 7?

Cain: "Uh-huh, and you have already read my bill."

Beckley: "And didn't the Speaker say the same thing?"

Cain: "House Bill 6 is now in Senate Bill 7. We've had a hearing on it. Thank you."

Beckley: "We don't know. You just gave it to us. We do not trust that."

Cain: "Is there an objection to the adoption of the committee substitute?"

González: "This is a deviation."

Cain: "The chair hears none, and the substitute is adopted."

Just seconds after this quick, protested adoption of the committee substitute wiping away many key measures in SB 7, Cain attempted to pass the bill out of the committee to move it toward the full floor.

However, state Rep. Travis Clardy, R-Nacogdoches, passed on voting, meaning supporters of the bill lost a key Republican vote.

Cain then pulled the bill, and left it pending as the committee recessed for the floor, but expressed he planned to bring it to a vote when they returned. The committee passed the bill strictly along party lines after reconvening.

The source who confirmed this maneuver was technically allowed under House rules also said it is highly unusual to adopt a committee substitute for the bill without recognizing members of the committee.

State Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, is not in the committee, but watched as it broke down. Considered an expert in House rules and procedures by colleagues and experts, the 10-term veteran told CBS Austin on Friday he has never seen anything like what Cain did before recessing for the floor, which he said has the potential to delay or even derail SB 7.

"I think the most interesting and significant thing I saw yesterday was the chairman of the committee stopped the vote in the middle of a vote because he was losing. I've been in the legislature, this is my tenth term, so this is going to be 20 years, and I've never seen anybody stop a vote in the middle of roll call because they were about to lose. That just doesn't happen," Martinez Fischer said. "I think when it comes to voting rights, particularly, you want to dot every 'i' and cross every 't,' and you want to make sure you are not manipulating the process to achieve an outcome. I would say what I saw yesterday morning with Chairman Cain stopping the vote because he was about to lose, that's a manipulation of the process, and as a result of that, people are losing their voting rights because somebody wants to be loosey-goosey with the rules. We should all be concerned about that. That's not just a Republican thing or a Democratic thing. That's a democracy thing."

Additionally, while the passage of SB 7's committee substitute is allowed by the book, Martinez Fischer said it's rare to do it this way for such a bitterly partisan bill.

The San Antonio representative said this method is common for single-page, non-controversial bills.

"Bottom line is this: if you're going to pass out a substantial piece of legislation with multiple pages, everybody wants to know what's inside it before we take a vote. The last thing we want to do is go home and explain to our constituents that we took a vote and didn't know what's inside the bill. This is legislature 101. This is a fundamental, and the committee should have been afforded the time," Martinez Fischer said.

Additionally, the way this bill passed out of committee could leave it vulnerable during floor discussions whenever the Calendars Committee puts it on the daily calendar.

It's typical fashion for bills so sharply divided to be the subject of points of order, which are parliamentary procedures used by lawmakers to raise concerns a bill or amendment violates lawmaking rules in the chamber, which leads to some bills or amendments getting killed on the floor before even getting to a vote.

However, Martinez Fischer said SB 7 may have an even larger target than a bill of this kind normally would, because of the way Thursday's committee hearing devolved and led to its passage.

"I think just what I've seen in the Elections Committee, it appears to me that this is a target-rich environment to find those opportunities," Martinez Fischer said. "None of them are ever really telegraphed or advertised. It wouldn't be something we talk about in the news, but certainly that old adage of 'where there's smoke, there's fire,' that's pretty true in the sense of the Elections Committee. Just watching the way the committee is run and following the committee on how they handled procedurally, how they've conducted these hearings, it tells me it's probably going to be a good use of a member's time to analyze the paperwork to make sure everything is done properly because if it's not, it'll be subject to a point of order."

This is not the first time Cain has been the culprit of funny business in this committee.

In a late-March meeting, while trying to pass HB 6 out of committee, Cain handed over chairmanship of the committee to González, which is a common practice whenever a chair of a committee is about to present a bill he or she authored to members.

After about an hour of fielding questions on the bill from members, González tried to recognize state Reps. Nicole Collier, D-Fort Worth, and Eddie Rodriguez, D-Austin, to allow them to ask questions, despite not being committee members. Collier and Rodriguez are chairs of the Texas Legislative Black Caucus and the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, respectively. Both have been vocal in their criticism of such election laws, saying they target minority communities disproportionately while not actually making elections more secure.

Before they could ask Cain questions, he blocked their testimony by regaining control of his position as chair

Cain then quickly motioned to recess, but did not set up a time to reconvene, meaning he had to end the meeting before listening to public testimony according to parliamentary rules. This led to more than 100 witnesses who traveled to the Capitol to testify had to go back home without being able to comment on the bill until the next meeting.

Before breaking for the floor, González let out a parting shot at the tactic Cain used.

"This is bull-(expletive)," González said.