Redistricting in Tx

Very strange arguments, in my opinion, on the Delay redistricting in Tx. It appears, from reports that the SCOTUS isn't convinced that Democratic gerrymandering is more valid than Republican gerrymandering. But of course, I doubt anyone wants to put it that bluntly.

The main reason election experts, politicians and constitutional lawyers are interested in the Texas cases (four of them were consolidated for argument) is that they provide a new review of the validity of redistricting plans that one party pushes through mainly to maximize its own candidates' success at the polls. But the Court has never settled on a constitutional principle for when there has been too much partisanship, and the key question going into the Wednesday hearing was whether Justice Kennedy has found a principle he can embrace.

The most telling comment by him came midway in the argument of the challengers to the Texas plan. Kennedy suggested that it would be "very dangerous" if the Court were to take away from state legislatures the authority to reopen a districting plan that was found to be excessively partisan. Leaving open the option of drawing new districts within a single decade, he said, would act as "a control mechanism," with legislators on notice that if they "over-reached" in creating partisan advantage, that could be corrected. The comment suggested that Kennedy does, indeed, think that partisanship was, potentially, a constitutional problem and that legislatures needed flexibility to deal with it. His emphasis, though, was more on a legislative corrective than a judicial one.

Sounds reasonable to me. In fact part of the reason that this case is interesting is because many states have districts drawn specifically to suppress the opposing party vote. Texas obviously had that problem.

In congressional elections two years ago, about 60% of Texas voters chose Republicans, who won 21 of 32 seats. Most voters also picked Republicans in 2002, before the districts were redrawn, yet Democrats won 17 of the 32 seats.

The thing that strikes me as improper is that Tx had a panel of judges redistrict in 2001.

In 2001, Democrats controlled Texas' Senate, Republicans the state House. The deadlocked Legislature could not redraw Texas' congressional districts. So a panel of judges redrew the districts, making relatively few changes, and longtime incumbent moderate Democrats were reelected in 2002.

This leaves a bad taste in ones mouth. If neither political party had control, why did the judiciary get to decide. It also begs the question of politics in the judiciary. I know that there are elected judges in Texas, though I'm uncertain if the judges of this panel were elected or appointed.

I also found this exchange, well hidden from most reporting in the MSM, in regards to redistricting with regards to Latinos.

Associate Justice Antonin Scalia wondered what was wrong with Republicans wanting to remove Hispanics from District 23 because they tend to vote Democratic.

"You're saying if I've made an assumption about how solvent [Hispanics'] voting patterns are you're saying I've made a racial decision?" he asked.

"The state removed Latino voters from District 23 because they were Latinos," Perales replied.

Later, Scalia's lack of sympathy for Perales' argument led to a snappish exchange.

"Isn't the district 90 percent Latino? How can you take anyone else out?" he asked.

"That's exactly my point..." Perales began to respond.

"That's my point, too," Scalia said, cutting her off.

This is pretty odd. If the district was so heavily Latino and very Democratic, how would redrawing change that district?

Texas Republicans claim that they compensated for Bonilla's district by redrawing District 28, in which they connected two distant Hispanic-majority communities. The result was a dumbbell-shaped district of questionable validity, as Department of Justices lawyers and other experts have found.

"It's about a cluster of Hispanics in South Austin and a cluster on the border and a bunch of empty districts joining them all together. The court has said that is suspect," said John Alford, political scientist at Rice University in Houston.

"Once the process was started by the desire to buttress Republican districts, the question still is regardless of that, how cognizant of ethnicity can you be in crafting a district," Alford said. "How distorted can a district become when the purpose is to capture a particular race or ethnicity?"

Unfortunately, the redistricting based on ethnicity seems to be much more common. Even when it ends with bizarre linking of populations. Though I have to say, I don't see an obvious problem with redistricting to cluster the ethnic group that votes primarily one political view. I'd be interested in a reason why that is wrong.

This is all very strange. The contortions that the politicos and now the lawyers are going through to have political control strikes me as distortions of reality. No single party is going to be fair. That is a fact of reality. The Tx Democrats yelping partisan unfairness is just a joke since they themselves have distorted the districts for so many years.

Wonder what the districting in Massachusetts would look like if it was done by Republicans. Or it was just done fairly by percentage of vote.