Longtime followers of Indiana politics may have experienced déjà vu Sunday when Democratic members of the Texas House decamped to Illinois to deny the Republican majority the quorum needed to conduct business.
In 2011, Indiana House Democrats employed a similar strategy to prevent a vote on a controversial right-to-work statute that was strongly opposed by many union workers, especially in Northwest Indiana.
Their 34-day walkout to Urbana, Illinois, managed to delay enactment of Indiana's right-to-work law for another 12 months.
But Statehouse Republicans still pushed ahead that year with the once-a-decade redrawing of legislative district boundaries that effectively ended competitive congressional elections in the Hoosier State, and produced Republican supermajorities in the Indiana House and Senate that have continued ever since.
In fact, since 2013, Indiana Democrats haven't had a sufficient number of members in either chamber to pull off another legislative walkout — giving Republicans free reign to enact state policies on abortion, taxes, marijuana, toll roads, and other issues that polls show a majority of Hoosiers don't support.
The tactic of quorum breaking, used in many states by both political parties over the years, works because the Indiana Constitution, as well as the Texas Constitution, requires at least two-thirds of legislators (a quorum) be physically present in the chamber to act on legislation.
The remaining members can attempt to compel the attendance of their absent colleagues through fines, arrests and other means, but can't do much else besides convening and adjourning until at least two-thirds of legislators are in attendance.
The walkout by Texas House Democrats aims to stop an unusual mid-decade redistricting demanded by Republican President Donald Trump in the hope of maintaining a Republican U.S. House majority following the 2026 congressional elections.
The president's political party typically loses House seats in midterm elections and Republicans only have a slim House majority, so Trump is hoping that reshaping Texas districts to favor Republicans now, instead of waiting until 2031 after the next U.S. Census, will preserve GOP control of the House and stave off the misconduct investigations, and potential impeachment, likely under a Democratic majority.
Democratic governors in states like California, Illinois and New York have threatened to do their own mid-decade redistricting to favor Democratic congressional candidates if Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott succeeds in redistricting Texas.
Region residents also soon could find themselves at the center of this maelstrom if Republican Gov. Mike Braun bows to national pressure and convenes a special session of the Indiana General Assembly to try to reshape Northwest Indiana's 1st Congressional District in the hope of ending its nine-decade streak of Democratic representatives.
In such a scenario, the goal of effectively representing the shared interests of citizens living in Lake, Porter and northwest LaPorte counties would be discarded in favor of a new district map stretching further south or east, perhaps even across time zones, in the hope of squeezing in just enough Republican voters to flip the seat.
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