AUSTIN, Texas — A day after the Texas House of Representatives voted to make it harder to cast a ballot in a state that already has some of the nation’s most restrictive voting laws, leading Democrats and hundreds of supporters gathered outside the State Capitol on Saturday to protest against legislation steaming toward approval in the Republican-led Legislature.
“This is the single greatest attack on our democracy, not just in our lifetime, but perhaps in the lifetime of this very democracy,” said former Representative Beto O’Rourke, who was a Democratic presidential candidate in the 2020 presidential primary.
He was joined by a second former Democratic presidential aspirant, Julián Castro, the former San Antonio mayor.
Saturday’s rally came a day after the State House of Representatives had voted, 78 to 64, to pass Senate Bill 7, which opponents continued to attack as an assault on voting rights despite a number of modifications added by Democrats. The bill now heads back to the State Senate, where representatives from the two chambers will meet in a conference committee to resolve differences between the two versions in the final three weeks of the session.
