Disappearing and Bolting Quorums

by Karl Kurtz

Last year, when Wisconsin and Indiana legislators fled their states to prevent their respective legislatures from conducting business, I recounted the story of Abraham Lincoln breaking a quorum in the Illinois House of Representatives by climbing out the window. Now, University of Missouri political science Prof. Peverill Squire, in a remarkable piece of historical research, reveals that the Lincoln episode was far from the earliest case of a "bolting quorum" in an American legislature. In "Quorum Rules in Historical Perspective: Their Use and Abuse," he reports on quorum rules in colonial legislatures:

The first quorum standard in the Americas was established in the 1629 Massachusetts Bay Colony Charter. That document held that 7 of the 18 assistants along with the governor or deputy governor was a sufficient number for the “dispatching of all such buysinesses”. This quorum rule is notable because it was put in place 11 years before the English House of Commons first established one.

Carpenters Hall in Philadelphia, the sometime home of the House of Representatives of the Province of Pennsylvania

Many colonial legislatures had fairly loose quorum requirements--often less than a majority of the members and, in a few cases, no quorum requirement at all--and they often changed them to meet the needs and practices of the times. The strictest quorum standard of two-thirds of the members was established in Pennsylvania in 1683, leading to this story [footnotes deleted from original]:

...[T]he strategic opportunities offered by quorum rules were well understood by politicians of the time. Perhaps the earliest episode of quorum exploitation occurred in Pennsylvania, not long after the two-thirds standard was established. In 1689, at the behest of Penn’s deputy governor, a sufficient number of Assembly members were persuaded to leave the chamber to break the quorum in order to prevent the passage of a list of grievances against the proprietor. In response, the bolters’ remaining colleagues voted to denounce “that abominable Treachery and Practice of the said absent Members, in wilfully neglecting to appear at the Time, when they understood that this House were going about to call the Violators of the Liberties of the Freemen of this Government to Account.” They went on to seek retribution by stating “That the said absent Members ought not to receive any Salary for the Service this Assembly; and are not worthy to be chose again, or be intrusted as Delegates.”

This sounds remarkably like the Indiana House of Representatives in 2012 or any other recent legislative walkout, right down to the effort to deny the absent members their pay.

In the paper, Squire distinguishes between "disappearing quorums," in which members are present in the chamber but refuse to vote, and "bolting quorums," in which members leave the chamber, often fleeing the state or even the country to prevent state law enforcement officers from compelling their attendance. Disappearing quorums were a significant problem in the 19th century in the U.S. House of Representatives and state legislatures, but changes in rules interpretations, more cohesive majority parties and improved legislative attendance by members caused the practice to become obsolete by the early 1900s.

Bolting quorums, more often called legislative walkouts, are still with us, though, especially in chambers that require two-thirds quorums. "...[B]olts are usually reserved for opposition to very high profile measures, and they disproportionally involve redistricting bills, ratification of constitutional amendments and contested elections," says Squire.

Squire found 52 instances of bolting quorums in American history, as summarized in this table adapted from his paper:

State	Number	Most recent
Indiana	22	2012
Tennessee	8	1920
Oregon	5	2001
Texas	4	2003
Wisconsin	2	2011
Pennsylvania	1	1787
Illinois	1	1859
Iowa	1	1859
Louisiana	1	1872
Ohio	1	1886
Montana	1	1890
Florida	1	1891
West Virginia	1	1911
Rhode Island	1	1925
California	1	1994-95
Alabama	1	1999
Total	52

For legislative junkies, Squire's paper is tantatmount to a thriller. It's not without some humor, though. During 1855-1867,

...breaking quorum in Indiana was so frequent that lawmakers sometimes took it with humor. During a bolt in 1861, the legislative records reported the following discussion in the Senate:

The PRESIDENT. I would ask if the Doorkeeper found the absentees?
The Assistant Doorkeeper. (From the Doorkeeper’s chair at the door.) I saw them pretty nearly all in a batch, and the answer was “Tell them to go to hell.”
Mr. WHITE. I move that we don’t do that.
The motion was agreed to.

Squire offers this conclusion to his paper:

Legislators from all parties have exploited quorum rules when, given the opportunity, it has suited their purposes. Indeed, there is remarkable uniformity to the roles played by each side in these disputes. Those breaking the quorum always center their defense on the need to protect the minority from majority tyranny. In turn, the majority always blasts those breaking quorums for their “revolutionary” actions. Importantly, the parties making these charges are, over time, interchangeable. Legislative rules may not exist to be broken, but they do present irresistible opportunities for exploitation by all involved in the process.

Related postings: "Legislative Walkouts are Nothing New," "Sleeping-in at the Capitol", "Majority Rule and Minority Rights: Perspectives on Legislative Obstruction in Wisconsin and Indiana"and  "An Expert's Favorite Filibuster: The Rhode Island Senate in 1923-24".