would have allowed the Attorney General to file suit for discrimination in public places and added an amendment that guaranteed a trial by jury for anyone charged with restricting an individual's right to vote. This modified version of the bill passed the House on August 27 by a vote of 279–97. Strom Thurmond, a United States senator from South Carolina, remarked that the civil rights bill constituted a "cruel and unusual punishment", and stated that he hoped to "educate the country" by means of an extended speech against the legislation. Senate rules allow for virtually unlimited debate on a bill, and a filibuster is a means of using these rules to prevent a bill's passage by speaking for as long as possible. At the time of Thurmond's filibuster, leaving the chamber or sitting down while speaking would end a senator's speech. A filibuster can also be ended by a cloture vote, which requires a certain percentage of senators to agree that a speech should be ended. At the time of Thurmond's speech, the threshold for cloture was a two-thirds majority. Thurmond holds the record for the longest filibuster, but longer filibusters have been carried out by groups of senators. Thurmond's filibuster was primarily focused on a specific provision in the civil rights bill that focused on minor voting rights contempt cases. The provision allowed these cases to be tried by a judge without a jury present, but allowed a second trial by jury if penalties in the first trial exceeded 45 days' imprisonment or $300 in fines. This arrangement had been decided through a compromise between Republicans and Democrats, though according to historian Joseph Crespino it had very little practical impact since many judges would not hear a case without a jury if doing so made a second trial more likely. Thurmond and other Southern senators saw the provision as a violation of the defendant's right to a trial by jury, which is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Thurmond had been significantly involved in politics before his senatorship: he had served as Governor of South Carolina, helped to found the States' Rights Democratic Party after a walkout over civil rights at the 1948 Democratic National Convention, and ran against Harry S. Truman and Thomas E. Dewey as the new party's candidate in the 1948 presidential election. Thurmond garnered more than one million votes and won four states in this third-party