Democratic Legislators Defy Voters and Constitution by Refusing to Govern.

Democrats in state legislatures across the country are picking up in 2012 precisely where they left off in 2011 - with brazen "election nullification" tactics. The Democrats participating in these undemocratic and unlawful election nullification exercises do so under the guise of protecting a "fundamental policy issue." I am talking about, of course, the practice of legislators not coming to the chamber floor to deny a legislative body the required quorum of members present. The most recent case is in Indiana, where Big Labor is opposing Republican efforts to enact a right to work law. While some might question the term "election nullification" as too dramatic, it's actually the simplest way to describe the intent of the actors here: to prevent public policy changes enacted by lawfully elected Republican majorities. Perhaps the Democrats would have a defense to this election nullification claim if they could show that quorum requirements were intended for these instances of "fundamental policy" as an additional "check" in a state's constitutional system of checks and balances.

Let's take a look at the quorum requirement to see if anything suggests a justification of the Democrats' actions. First, quorum requirements are not unique to legislative bodies – corporate boards, membership organizations, and other entities that require collective action all necessitate them. The quorum requirement is meant to protect "against totally unrepresentative action in the name of the body by an unduly small number of persons," according to Robert's Rules of Order. Per West's Encyclopedia of American Law, "the purpose of a quorum rule is to give decisions made by a quorum enough authority to allow binding action to be conducted." Quorum requirements are meant to be a shield against action by a minority of representatives that do not constitute a sufficient number of elected officials to say that the body as a whole participated in the action. In contrast, we've recently watched Democrat legislators in Indiana and last year in Wisconsin use the quorum requirement as a sword to prevent the legislative process from moving forward. Whether the legislators are physically in their home Capitols but refusing to come to the floor or holed up in hotels just across the state line – the willful acts of this minority of legislators, ironically enough, are effectively doing the exact same harm to the constitutional system of government that quorum rules seek to prohibit. And, that is, the tyranny of the minority.

It's time to call a spade a spade. Democratic legislators who flee their states or fail to come to the floor in order to deny a legislative quorum are engaging in election nullification. Having lost the 2010 elections, the Democrats are simply "taking their ball and going home." Acting as a sore loser and playing the martyr is something that Americans on a bipartisan basis disdain. On the issue of election nullification, the Democrats themselves are not even united in philosophy. Having taken control of the Virginia Senate in the 2011 elections by virtue of a Republican Lieutenant Governor to break ties between a 20-20 partisan split, Virginia Senate Democrats have consistently ruled out not showing up for Session to thwart the Republicans' efforts to pass reform legislation this year. The actions of these Virginia Senate Democrats make it clear that there is bipartisan rejection of election nullification in this country. Let's keep it that way and call it what it is. Today, I will start tweeting more examples of election nullification tagged with #electionnullification and encourage others to follow suit. The press, business leaders, and advocates of good government should start calling this behavior what it is: anti-democratic and fundamentally corrosive to constitutional government.