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To: Torie
This one isn't about a blocker bill. It is about a quorum.

Thanks for the reply, but are you sure about that? From the article:

A source familiar with the Democrats' strategy said that a request for a temporary restraining order has been drafted but not filed and that several lawyers have had a hand in developing the language.

The request would seek to prevent Dewhurst dropping the Senate the two-thirds tradition, said the source, who requested anonymity to keep from putting his job at risk.

"The thinking being this: For the first time, minority and minority-impact senators ... now have, for the first time, enough votes to block legislation under longstanding Senate rules," the source said. "So rescinding the two-thirds rule and .. would be an infringement on minority voting rights."

Doesn't it sound like the Dem lawsuit would be seeking a restraining order to prevent Dewhurst from dropping the '2/3rd's tradition', which is a reference to the blocker bill procedure. The Dems have said that they'd return(and thus provide a 2/3rd's quorum) if the blocker bill was retained. I thought the 2/3rds required for a quorum was set by the state constitution, and thus could not be waived by the Lt. Gov. However the blocker bill procedure is simply a tradition, that can and has been waived by the Lt. Gov. From Lt. Gov. Dewhurst's letter to the Houston Chronicle in post #4:

When Senate Democrats fled the state, they tried to claim that Senate tradition always requires a two-thirds vote on any matter. That's partisan spin. Tradition and precedent actually dictate that the two-thirds vote should not govern in redistricting, particularly in special sessions.

In 1971, 1981 and 1992 special sessions on redistricting, Lt. Govs. Ben Barnes, Bill Hobby and Bob Bullock did not require a two-thirds vote on redistricting. In fact, the two-thirds vote was not used in at least 20 special legislative sessions in the last half-century alone.

At a special session called by Gov. Ann Richards starting Jan. 2, 1992, Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, a Democrat, publicly announced that he did not have 21 votes, or a two-thirds margin, to change the court map. So he purposefully abandoned the two-thirds tradition, establishing what we now know as the Bullock Precedent.

It would be the GOP that would seek to override the supra majority requirement, but IMHO they don't need to resort to that. And this article is about the Dems considering going to court.

19 posted on 07/31/2003 10:31:27 PM PDT by Diddle E. Squat
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To: Diddle E. Squat
OK. IC. Silly lawsuit; it is DOA in my opinion. As long as the Dems hang out in NM, it is moot. I guess they want to come back, without risk of enabling a redistricting. They want their cake, and eat it too. Don't we all?
21 posted on 07/31/2003 10:34:10 PM PDT by Torie
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