The Senate Filibuster
A Brief History of Vote-Delaying Tactics
As long as there have been legislative bodies, politicians have employed tactics to stall votes in order to gain advantage. Such strategies can be found even in the earliest days of the United States, when the first Congress was debating the location of the Nation’s Capital."The weather was inclement and one side was waiting for another member to arrive by stagecoach to give them the necessary votes," said Senate Historian Richard A. Baker. "They delayed the vote by talking until the man arrived."In the U.S. Senate, the roots of a tactic that would later be called filibustering date back to…
