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Rep. Bill Flores

Former Representative for Texas’s 17th District

pronounced bil // FLOH-rez


Flores was the representative for Texas’s 17th congressional district and was a Republican. He served from 2011 to 2020.

Elections must be decided by counting votes

Our work to hold Congress accountable only matters if elections are decided by counting votes. President Trump, his senior government advisors, and Republican legislators collaborated to have the 2020 presidential election decided instead by incumbent politicians running in the very same election. Their attempts to suppress entire state-certified vote counts without adjudication in the courts and using a disinformation campaign of lies and conspiracy theories was a months-long, multifarious attempted coup.


Flores was among the Republican legislators who participated in the attempted coup. Shortly after the election, Flores joined a case before the Supreme Court calling for all the votes for president in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — states that were narrowly won by Democrats — to be discarded, in order to change the outcome of the election, based on lies and a preposterous legal argument which the Supreme Court rejected. (Following the rejection of several related cases before the Supreme Court, another legislator who joined the case called for violence.) The January 6, 2021 violent insurrection at the Capitol, led on the front lines by militant white supremacy groups, attempted to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from taking office by disrupting Congress’s count of electors.
Photo of Rep. Bill Flores [R-TX17, 2011-2020]

Analysis

Legislative Metrics

Read our 2020 Report Card for Flores.

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Flores is shown as a purple triangle in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the House of Representatives in 2020 positioned according to our ideology score (left to right) and our leadership score (leaders are toward the top).

The chart is based on the bills Flores sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 6, 2015 to Dec 28, 2020. See full analysis methodology.

Enacted Legislation

Flores was the primary sponsor of 2 bills that were enacted:

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Does 2 not sound like a lot? Very few bills are ever enacted — most legislators sponsor only a handful that are signed into law. But there are other legislative activities that we don’t track that are also important, including offering amendments, committee work and oversight of the other branches, and constituent services.

We consider a bill enacted if one of the following is true: a) it is enacted itself, b) it has a companion bill in the other chamber (as identified by Congress) which was enacted, or c) if at least about half of its provisions were incorporated into bills that were enacted (as determined by an automated text analysis, applicable beginning with bills in the 110th Congress).

Bills Sponsored

Issue Areas

Flores sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:

Health (37%) Energy (17%) Science, Technology, Communications (14%) Taxation (11%) Environmental Protection (9%) Economics and Public Finance (6%) Government Operations and Politics (6%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Flores recently introduced the following legislation:

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Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

Voting Record

Key Votes

Flores voted Yea

Passed 338/88 on May 13, 2015.

The USA Freedom Act (H.R. 2048, Pub.L. 114–23) is a U.S. law enacted on June 2, 2015 that restored in modified form several provisions of …

Flores voted Nay

Passed 219/206 on Dec 11, 2014.

This bill became the vehicle for passage of the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015 [pdf], which was approved by the House on December …

Flores voted Aye

Flores voted Nay

Flores voted Nay

Flores voted Aye

Passed 304/117 on Jun 23, 2011.

The Leahy–Smith America Invents Act (AIA) is a United States federal statute that was passed by Congress and was signed into law by President Barack …

Missed Votes

From Jan 2011 to Dec 2020, Flores missed 179 of 6,299 roll call votes, which is 2.8%. This is on par with the median of 2.3% among the lifetime records of representatives serving in Dec 2020. The chart below reports missed votes over time.

We don’t track why legislators miss votes, but it’s often due to medical absenses, major life events, and running for higher office.

Show the numbers...

Primary Sources

The information on this page is originally sourced from a variety of materials, including: