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Texas Redistricting: The Week Ahead

Michael Li — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 21:44:55 GMT

This week could be a big one with committee and floor votes possible on redistricting bills. Here's what the schedule looks like so far:

Monday, June 10.

The Supreme Court releases opinions at 9 a.m. central time, and, at this point in the term, it is possible that could include a decision in Shelby Co. (although most people are guessing that a Shelby decision is still probably a couple of weeks away).
At 2 p.m. on Monday, the House redistricting committee meets in San Antonio to take public testimony.
Although the Senate redistricting committee had talked about field hearings in Harlingen on Monday, that now looks to be off. (Ditto the Senate committee hearings mooted at one time for Dallas or Fort Worth).

Read more below the jump.
Wednesday, June 12.

The Senate redistricting committee meets at 9 a.m. in Austin. The committee's chair, Kel Seliger, has said that the committee will consider amendments at that time and that he hopes that a bill or bills can be voted out that day.
The whole Senate reconvenes at 1 p.m. at which point, we should have a better sense of when bills might be brought to the floor and when.
Meanwhile, in Houston, the House redistricting committee holds a public hearing at 2 p.m.

Thursday, June 13.

The Supreme Court will issue more opinions at 9 a.m. central time today. If Shelby Co. hasn't come down yet, the watch continues.

Friday, June 14.

The speculated date on which votes on bill(s) in the Senate might take place.

Monday, June 17.

The House reconvenes at 10 a.m.
It is not clear the House redistricting committee will have voted any bills out of committee by that time, but since House committee hearings only require 24 hours notice during a special session, it is possible that it could.
Also more Supreme Court opinions at 9 a.m. central time.

Backgrounder: Texas' Population Growth Since the Last Round of Redistricting

Michael Li — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 18:57:48 GMT

The 2010 Census showed that there were 25,145,561 Texans as of April 1 of that year.

By July 2011, the Census Bureau estimates that the state's population had increased by 529,120, giving Texas the fastest rate of growth in the nation.

By July 2012, that figure had grown by another 427,400. And at 3.63%, the state's two-year rate of population growth outpaced that of every jurisdiction other than the District of Columbia (5.09%) and North Dakota (4.09%).

As was the case over the previous decade, Hispanic population gain continues to be the major driver of Texas' growth.

Read more about what this means for redistricting below the jump.
Of the 529,120 people Texas added between 2010 and 2011, 330,661 (or 72.7%) were Hispanic. And while the Census Bureau has not yet released the demographic breakdown of population gain between 2011-2012, it is broadly expected to follow the same pattern.

Hispanics and other non-Anglos also are driving the state's growth in the critical redistricting measure of citizen voting age population (CVAP).

The Census Bureau's most recent CVAP estimates calculate that in 2011 there were 15,583,700 Texans who were citizens over the age of 18 - up from 14,896,395 in the prior 2010 estimate.

Of that 687,305 in CVAP growth, 373,410 (or 54.3%) was Hispanic. Another 18.1% of the CVAP increase was African-American, and another 11% was Asian.

In other words, non-Anglos made up 83.4% of Texas' citizen voting age population gain between 2010 and 2011.

And given that the state's population is increasingly diverse at younger levels, that trend is expected to accelerate in coming years.

Indeed, while Anglos made up 16.6% of the state's CVAP growth between 2010 and 2011, they are projected to make up only 12.4% of the CVAP gain between 2012 and 2016.

In raw numbers, in fact, the state is on pace to add nearly as many citizen voting age Asians as Anglos by the next presidential election.

Welcome to the new Texas.

Legislature Looks Like It's Coming Back Tuesday For Special on Redistricting

Michael Li — Fri, 24 May 2013 20:13:27 GMT

To paraphrase Don Corleone: "Just when you think you're out, they pull you back in . . ."

Wayne Slater from the Dallas Morning News has tweeted that two well-placed sources say that a special session on Texas redistricting will start Tuesday, immediately after sine die.

In the mean time, the Congressional Black Caucus has sent a letter to Gov. Perry expressing concerns about a special session over redistricting and telling Perry that any acceptable map needed to contain at least four African-American ability-to-elect districts.

Currently there are only three such districts (CD-9 and CD-18 in Harris County and CD-30 in Dallas County) where the African-American citizen voting age population is above or just barely shy of 50%.

In addition, CD-33 on the court's interim map has a Hispanic citizen voting age plurality (40%) but was won in 2012 by Congressman Marc Veasey in the Democratic primary largely on the strength of African-American turnout.

The letter also expressed support for Hispanic efforts "to be fully empowered within the Texas congressional plan."

Learn more below the jump.
At least some of the redistricting plaintiffs have suggested that in the Metroplex adequate Hispanic representation would entail addition of a clear Hispanic ability-to-elect district in addition to maintaining a version of the district Veasey currently represents.

Perhaps something like this from Plan C204 proposed by the Quesada plaintiffs in the last go round (CD-34 being a Hispanic opportunity district and CD-35 being an African-American opportunity district in this map):

Or this from Plan C236 (CD-3 being a Dallas-based Hispanic opportunity district and CD-33 being a Tarrant based African-American opportunity district):

Here's a copy of the full letter:

Congressional Black Caucus Gov. Perry Letter by Nicole Narea

Some more Q&A:

Why have a special session if the court in San Antonio is going to be looking at the maps anyway?

The reasons appear to be as much practical and political as legal.

The maps passed by the Texas Legislature in 2011 ended up getting a very cold reception from the three-judge D.C. panel, which not only declined to preclear any of them but also found substantial evidence of intentional discrimination against non-Anglo voters.

In fact, on the congressional map, the court went so far as to say "[t]he parties have provided more evidence of discriminatory intent than we have space, or need, to address."

Simply put, that's not a very good place for a lawyer to be when going back into court.

And the hope among the Republican leadership seems to be that by adopting the court-drawn interim maps, they might wipe the slate at least partially clean - optically if not legally.

On top of that, there are the inevitable political considerations.

Doing everything possible to avoid another messy and unpopular delay of the Texas primary would seem to be in the interest of Greg Abbott, who has all but said he is going to run for governor in 2014.

Although it's been more than a year since the last round of map drawing, memories of the anxiety of the process induced - and the pain of a brutally hot late July runoff - remain fresh. As does the fact that the delayed primary almost certainly gave Ted Cruz a chance to catch up to and overtake Lt. Governor David Dewhurst in the race for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate.

Why wouldn't the Governor wait until after the Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of section 5?

Given that the intent seems to be to adopt the interim maps in an abbreviated special session, the timing may come down to practicalities as much as anything. It just may be easier to do now than to reconvene the Legislature later this summer when people have scattered to the winds.

The uncertainty about Shelby Co. also probably works in favor of the Legislature's Republican leadership by avoiding or limiting intra-caucus fights that otherwise might occur, if section 5 were struck down, about whether to go back to the original legislatively enacted maps.

Of course, there also probably is some wariness about how long the process with the court might take. While the parties have expressed optimism that the court case could be completed in time to avoid too much interference with the election schedule, that's what they thought last time, too.

If the Governor were to wait until after a decision in Shelby Co. to call a special session, it would put a special session close to the optimal late July trial date the parties have talked about.

How would adopting the interim maps change the parties' legal positions?

It is not clear that it would.

Certainly if the Legislature had thrown out the maps it drew in 2011 and started anew - particularly if it had held extensive hearings, engaged minority groups, etc., as part of that process (things the DC court criticized it for not doing the last time) - then it is fairly clear that the new legislatively enacted maps would serve as the starting point for judicial review.

But, by all accounts, the Republican leadership's plan for a special session is simply take the court's interim maps and adopt them as permanent maps.

Those maps, however, were drawn under a Supreme Court directive that told the San Antonio panel to use caution in changing the maps absent a definitive preclearance decision. Moreover the court's orders adopting the maps, by their express terms, said they based on "preliminary determinations"and were "not a final ruling on the merits of any of the claims asserted."

And since then, the D.C. court has handed down a decision that found substantial evidence of intentional discrimination and a number of other problems with the maps not addressed by the interim maps - e.g., the elimination of CD-25 in Central Texas.

The evidence of intentional discrimination cited by the D.C. court especially would seem to undermine claims that the interim maps are new maps.

In North Texas, for example, the interim map made no changes to the Legislature's state house map - despite the fracturing of some of the same minority communities that gave rise to the court's creation of CD-33 in the interim congressional map. The awkwardly drawn HD-93 in Tarrant County and HD-105 in Dallas County are just two examples:

Any sense of where the San Antonio court is?

It's hard to say.

It's been over a year since the court last had a chance to consider that maps in detail - and that was in a mad dash scrum to get interim maps in place to allow the 2012 election to proceed.

However, while we don't have a clear sense of the court's temperature, the court's order clearly envisions a careful look at the maps regardless of whether section 5 survives.

And the fact that the court is starting the process now also indicates that the court is mindful of timing considerations and likely as anxious as everyone else to avoid another primary scheduling kerfuffle.

Part 2: Texas' Missing Young Voters

Michael Li — Tue, 14 May 2013 22:28:37 GMT

An earlier post took a look at the Census Bureau's estimates of voter turnout in Texas by age - and, well, the stats weren't pretty for 18-24 voters compared with their peers in other states.

But can the voter file tell us more?

The good news is that the age of voters - unlike ethnicity - is something that voter registrars in Texas track, so the data is considerably more certain and available. (To be sure, there are a few thousand voters without recorded birthdates and some inevitable coding errors - but not enough to be statistically significant in a universe of 13.6 million registered voters.)

Below the jump, let's take a look at the actual turnout data, starting with the voter pool.
Heading into the last general election, 18-24 year olds made up 9.61% of all registered voters in Texas, while voters 24-34 made up another 17.6% of the voter pool.

Voters over 50 made up 46.2% of the pool of potential voters.

But by this point, it will come as no surprise that when it came to actual turnout, older voters dominated.

In fact, voters over 50 - a group that is disproportionately Anglo - made up 55.3% of all actual voters.

By contrast, voters under 35 made up just 18.7% of actual voters, with voters 18-24 being just 6.3% of the voter universe.

It's not all bad news, however. Looking at statewide turnout rates as a percentage of registered voters, the data looks a little better for those young voters who actually got past the point of getting registered.

While 25.4% of all eligible 18-24 year olds voted in 2012, of those who were registered 38.13% did.

But that figure disguises some marked regional differences.

Among the 15 largest counties, for example, 46.29% of young voters in Travis County went to the polls compared with 69% of Travis County voters over 65.

By contrast, only 26.34% of their peers in Cameron County and 31.19% of those in El Paso County.

And, oh, how many 18-24 year olds were registered?

Using the Census Bureau's estimate of citizen voting age population, it looks like about 56% using actual voting records.

The Census Bureau, though, records a lower rate base on surveys (38.3%), likely meaning that many young people may not be aware they registered (e.g. registered at the DMV office and forgot) or may have moved since they first registered.

Texas' Missing Younger Voters

Michael Li — Sun, 12 May 2013 18:17:02 GMT

A lot of the focus on the Census Bureau's estimate of 2012 voter turnout has focused on ethnicity. But there's also a story to be told about turnout by age - and for Texas, it's not a pretty one.

As shown, in the chart below, Texas turnout in 2012 lags every age the US turnout rate in every age group except the eligible voters over 65+, where Texas slightly outperforms the nation as a whole.

The result isn't especially surprising given that Texas ranked 47th in the nation in voter turnout in 2012 (after coming in 50th in 2010). But what does stand out is the sharp fall off in Texas among voters 18-24 when benchmarked against the national turnout rate.

Read more below the jump.

As with everything these days in Texas, a big part of that no doubt has to do with the state's changing ethnic demographics. The chart below shows that younger Texans are considerably more diverse - and, as we've seen, Hispanics as a whole continue to undervote their Anglo and African-American peers.

But that doesn't tell the whole story - because younger voters in Texas also are underperforming their peers in other heavily Hispanic states - some of which were 2012 battlegrounds and others not.

And taking a slightly longer view, it doesn't get better looking for Texas.

Texas also lagged the other states in 2008 in turnout among 18-24 year olds, and, in 2010, only New Mexico did worse.

Likewise, in 2012, while every state, with the exception of Colorado, saw a drop off compared with 2008, Texas' was steeper. (In Colorado, a marijuana legalization proposition may have had something to do with that state's anomaly.)

And there's some suggestion, that Texas' youthful population may be less engaged in other ways as well. While Texas' CVAP population has boomed in recent years, the overall number of registered voters in the state has grown only slowly - leading to the emergence of a growing registration gap.

And to the extent Texas' turnout problem with younger voters is wrapped up with ethnicity, things are only likely to get more interesting. Between 2012 and 2016, Texas is expected to add a net of 1.56 million eligible voters - of whom 87.6% are projected to be non-Anglo and fully 58.1% will be Hispanic.

A Look at Texas Voter Turnout by Ethnicity

Michael Li — Thu, 09 May 2013 00:11:42 GMT

The Census Bureau is out with its eagerly awaited estimate of 2012 voter turnout by ethnicity.

For 2012, the Bureau estimates that nationwide 64.1% of citizen voting age Anglos, 66.2% of African-Americans, 48% of Hispanics, and 47.3% of Asians voted in 2012.

While the impact of the nation's growing Hispanic population on the 2012 election has gotten a lot of media play (deservedly), the turnout 'wonder story' of 2012 looks to involve African-Americans, not Hispanics.

Most groups in 2012, including Hispanics, saw falls in turnout. But African-American turnout reached a historic high, with African-Americans outvoting Anglos for the first time - ever. By contrast, while more Hispanics than ever voted, that looks to be a product of increasing numbers, not of increasing turnout rates.

Learn more below the jump.

The national trends also largely held for Texas - though in the case of Texas, Asians (42.4%) outvoted Hispanics (38.8%).

But, of course, any comparison of national and Texas figures has to take into account that national figures are skewed by the fact that a quarter of all US Hispanics live in Texas (another quarter live in California).

Looking at Hispanic turnout broken down by key states, Texas' continuing Hispanic turnout challenge remains glaring.

By contrast, turnout among Texas African-Americans largely held its own compared with other states with significant African-American populations.

Overall, Texas 2012 looks to be not that different from 2008.

What Fixing the Congressional Map Might Look Like for Travis County and Central Texas

Michael Li — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 03:17:55 GMT

It remains to be seen how the Texas redistricting saga will play out. But if the court were to restore a Travis County-centered district, what might it look like?

And what would become of the current Hispanic opportunity district (CD-35) - drawn by the Texas Legislature and incorporated into the court's second interim map - once the populous Hispanic parts of Travis County are removed?

The joint map advisory filed by 6 of 8 plaintiff groups with the court in San Antonio has suggested at least a couple of options.

Learn more below the jump.
The San Antonio-north district (Plan C220)

The first and probably most straightforward option would be an alignment similar to that in the first court-drawn interim map (Plan C220).

Under that original court plan, the portions of Travis County included in what is today CD-35 instead would have been used to anchor a compact crossover district in Travis and Hays counties.

The appeal of the district for Travis County folks is not hard to see. The district would include 61% of the population of Travis County (and the bulk of the City of Austin), and the Travis County portions of the district would make up 90% of the district's total population.

Significantly, from a legal perspective, the bulk of the people in the new district also would have been residents of the old CD-25. (To be sure, the district would shed Bastrop, Caldwell, and counties to the east that had been a part of the old CD-25 but population growth in Travis County over the last decade meant the district would have to shrink if it is to remain centered in Travis County.)

The plan also would have the advantage of maintaining a robust variant of CD-35 as a Hispanic opportunity district in Central Texas - deferring to the Texas Legislature's original decision to base one of the state's four new congressional districts in Central Texas.

Like the existing CD-35, the district under the court's Plan C220 would have an anchor in Bexar County and run northward but with an alignment running slightly further to the east - taking in portions of Guadalupe County and all of Caldwell County.

More importantly because the district would not have included populous parts of Travis County, it would take in a larger portion of Bexar County - displacing Congressman Henry Cuellar's CD-28 from Bexar County in this iteration.

And for the politically minded, it would reduce from four to three the number of Hispanic opportunity districts covering a part of Bexar County under the current interim map.

To compare:

CD-35 in the current interim map (Plan C235)

CD-35 in the original interim map (allowing a Travis County fix) (Plan C220)

Plan C220 also forms the basis for the Central Texas portions of Plan C236 proposed this session by State Rep. Yvonne Davis (D-Dallas).

The Nueces district (Plan C166 & Plan C164)

As an alternative, the parties' joint advisory also suggested the possibility of moving the district to South Texas where it would run from Nueces County to Cameron County along the US/Mexico border. An example of such a district was CD-27 in Plan C166. (The numbering gets a bit confusing on the maps because the map proposals date from 2011 and used different numbers for districts. For present purposes, just accept the districts as illustrations of concepts.)

Proponents of this solution say that it would address the issue of "more than 200,000 Latinos in Nueces County" being "isolated in the new [current] Anglo-dominated CD27" when that district shifted from running southward from Nueces County in the pre-2011 map to northward under the Texas Legislature's plan (incorporated without change by the court into its second interim plan).

Under the South Texas option, the parts of Bexar County that currently are in CD-35 would instead be redistributed into other South and West Texas oriented Hispanic opportunity districts.

Unlike the northward looking Plan C220, however, the Plan C166 fix would preserve four Hispanic opportunity districts covering at least a portion of Bexar County. Again from Plan C166:

CD-33 in Plan C164 proposed by State Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer (D-San Antonio) is another variant of a coastal South Texas opportunity district for Hispanics incorporating the bulk of Nueces County.

Texas Redistricting: It's Back! (sort of)

Michael Li — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 22:43:45 GMT

After largely lying dormant for most of this session, Texas redistricting made a reappearance today when the senate's state affairs committee's held at hearing on SB 1524 a bill by State Sen. Kel Seliger (R-Amarillo) that would adopt the three court-drawn interim maps as permanent.

The hearing ended up being a relatively sedate affair - although State Sen. Kirk Watson (D-Austin) drew a firm line in the sand when he told the committee that the senate's Democratic caucus was united in opposing moving forward with the bill.

If that holds, the Democratic caucus would have the votes needed under the senate's 2/3 rule to block consideration of the bill on the floor - absent procedural maneuvering by the Republican majority.

Watson told the committee that the Democratic caucus was opposed even to the possibility of taking up the state senate map on a stand alone basis.

Watson explained that's because although there is no dispute on the interim senate map, the caucus was concerned that House Republicans would amend the bill to add back the state house and congressional maps, after which only a simple majority would be required in the senate to pass the bill. Watson said that after years of redistricting battles, senate Democrats no longer felt they could trust the process.

State Sen. Rodney Ellis (D-Houston) also expressed concerns about the process and the possibility that Republicans might try to circumvent the 2/3 rule, noting that deviations from the established and customary rules in 2011 were one of the things cited by the D.C. court as supporting a finding of discriminatory intent.

For his part, the bill's author, State Sen. Kel Seliger (R-Amarillo), said in his opening that he did not plan to offer or accept any amendments to the bill. But that did not seem to be the view of all of his caucus members, with Sen. Duncan expressly raising the possibility at the end of the hearing of a substitute dealing just with the state senate map.

Written comments on the bill are due to the committee by April 24 at 5 p.m.

Duncan did not say when (or if) the committee would take up the bill again, except to say he would re-open public testimony if and when a substitute had been filed.

Separately, all 55 Democrats in the state house signed a letter today to Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott opposing adoption of the court-drawn interim state house and congressional maps on a permanent basis - something Abbott has been pushing.

The letter said the maps "retain many of the illegal and discriminatory features of the legislatively adopted plans" and said the members "stand united in opposition to the interim State House and congressional plans being used in any election going forward."

The letter also called on Abbott to "formally withdraw the pending appeal of the federal district court ruling that denied preclearance to the Texas redistricting plans."

The letter closed by saying:

If, as Texans, we believe our state can adopt fair, nondiscriminatory redistricting plans and election practices without federal review, then we should immediately demonstrate it by moving now to draw fair and nondiscriminatory plans that will easily clear any review by the Justice Department or federal courts.

An Update on Texas Redistricting and the Process Ahead

Michael Li — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 20:31:56 GMT

Last Friday was the deadline the San Antonio court gave parties in the Texas redistricting litigation to file advisories telling the court what they think it should do with the state's legislative and congressional maps.

The court previously told the parties that it would not "issue any opinion" until after the Supreme Court decides questions in Shelby Co. v. Holder surrounding the constitutionality of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

However, the court asked the parties for advice on alternative scenarios if section 5 is upheld and if it - or the coverage formula - are struck down, including time estimates.

So, what did they say? Find out below the jump.
TIMING

The parties split into several camps on timing.

On the one hand, the State of Texas and the Texas Democratic Party urged that that any hearings on new or modified maps be completed by the end of August to minimize the impact on the 2014 election schedule.

Under a schedule proposed by the state, the parties would submit briefs in July, and the court would hold evidentiary hearings in late July on interim maps, followed by an additional round of briefing in late August.

The Texas Democratic Party suggested that the process could begin even earlier, telling the court that the evidence on new maps "is now known and its presentation can occur whatever the result of the pending Supreme Court cases concerning Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act."

On the other hand, 5 of 7 of the plaintiff groups (the Quesada plaintiffs, the Travis Co. plaintiffs, Perez plaintiffs, NAACP, and African-American members of Congress) suggested that the court wait until early September to begin hearings on the state house and congressional maps, citing a need for pre-trial discovery. They cautioned, though, that "[t]he later in September, the more difficult it will be for a decision to issue, and maps be put in place, in time to maintain the current statutory schedule for elections."

The Republican Party of Texas, likewise, told the court that the process could be completed as late as October 31 and that the party was willing to make adjustments to election deadlines "to facilitate a decision by this Court ... and prevent unnecessary waste of resources."

The advisories filed by Mexican-American Legislative Caucus and the Texas Latino Redistricting Task Force did not discuss the timing issue. However, the Task Force's advisory hinted that the court might simply make the 2012 maps applicable to the 2014 elections by modifying the order adopting the maps (which, by its terms, made the court-drawn maps applicable only for elections 'in 2012').

Finally, on the state senate map, State Sen. Wendy Davis and LULAC told the court that only a short evidentiary hearing would be necessary on the state senate map if the court were inclined to adopt the interim map as the final remedial map for 2014 and beyond.

CHANGES TO THE MAPS

The parties - no big surprise - also split on whether additional changes are needed on the maps.

If section 5 survives and the Texas redistricting appeal is still pending, the State of Texas told the court that the 2012 interim maps could and should be used, without modification, for the 2014 elections since - in the state's view - those maps "account for every purported legal defect identified" in the preclearance decision.

The Latino Task Force (as noted above) also suggested in its advisory that the court in that scenario might simply modify its order to allow for the interim maps to be used in 2014. However, it hedged that statement by also saying the maps might "be further informed" by the D.C. court's ruling in the preclearance case.

The other plaintiff groups more strongly ruled out any further use of the 2012 interim maps in 2014.

MALC's advisory told the court that changes would be needed to the maps, regardless of the outcome of Shelby County and regardless of whether the court decided to develop permanent remedial maps or another set of interim maps for 2014.

Although MALC did not go in depth into what remedial or new interim maps might look like, it stressed that the 2012 interim plan was only a base line and needed "modifications to address the violations of Section 5 determined by the District Court for the District of Columbia."

The joint advisory filed by the remaining plaintiff groups, likewise, said that "while the 2012 interim plans are the starting point, they cannot be the end point for devising interim plans for 2014." Even if a Texas redistricting appeal is still pending, the advisory argued that the maps would need to be modified, among other things, to remedy the treatment of the old CD-25 (Lloyd Doggett's former seat in Central Texas).

And, if section 5 is struck down, MALC and the joint plaintiffs' advisories were emphatic that a number of other changes still needed to be made to the maps to address section 2 and constitutional concerns. The joint plaintiffs' advisory argued, for example:

"[W]hile the interim map did create a new effective African-American ability to elect district (CD 33), the interim map did not fully remedy the vote dilution in the DFW region ... [T]he interim plan in that region unnecessarily isolated and fragmented significant minority population into Anglo-controlled districts and fails to fairly reflect minority voting strength in the region and comply with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Creation of a new third minority opportunity district in the DFW area is the only viable remedial option."

Likewise, they argue that the state house map "is the product of intentional racial discrimination, and ... as a whole should be invalidated under the Equal Protection Clause and the Fifteenth Amendment." While noting that the "interim plan addressed many of the concerns" with the state house map, the advisory listed other problem areas, particularly Dallas and Tarrant counties, where the interim map simply adopted the legislature's plan in whole.

MALC's advisory similarly goes into great detail on what it says was the unconstitutional and systematic overpopulation of Hispanic districts and underpopulation of Anglo districts through use of devices like the 10% rule and county-line rule.

The Latino Task Force also told the court that, on the congressional map, the "Latino citizen voting age population in Texas is sufficiently large and geographically compact to comprise nine Latino opportunity districts."

On the state senate side, things are a little simpler - if only because there are fewer parties and only one district (SD 10) in dispute.

Wendy Davis and LULAC told the court they believed the court should go ahead and adopt the interim maps as permanent remedial maps. While not agreeing that court-drawn map should become the final map, the State of Texas agreed that the 2012 map should continue as the interim map - to the extent an interim map is needed - and noted that a bill was pending in the Texas Legislature that would adopt the 2012 interim maps as permanent.

Indeed, for its part, the state's advisory seemed to be banking on legislative action make the three interim maps permanent, telling the court that that "this case would become moot" if that happens. While interim maps still might be needed if the "new" maps were not precleared in time (assuming section 5 survives), the state's advisory told the court repeatedly that the "newly enacted plans will serve as the starting point for any court-drawn plans" (a position the state seems to believe would be easier to defend).

The state also asked the court to put pressure on the Texas Legislature, telling the court that "[i]f the Legislature indicates that it will take up redistricting, this Court should set a deadline that gives the Legislature notice of the time frame within which it must enact new redistricting plans."

The Republican Party of Texas and Texas Democratic Party did not take a substantive position on map changes.

The court said it would decide whether to hold a status conference after receiving and reviewing the parties' advisories.

You can find the advisories in full here

To see the maps that were filled in the Lege by State Rep. Yvonne Davis, go here

Backgrounder: Texas and Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act

Michael Li — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 00:31:30 GMT

With the Supreme Court set to take up the constitutionality of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act on Wednesday in one of the most momentous cases this term, here's a look at the history of section 5 in Texas:

Texas is one of 8 states currently covered in its entirety by the preclearance provisions in section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. In addition, another 8 states are partially covered. The other states covered in whole are: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. Virginia also is covered as a state, although a number of its counties and political subdivisions no longer are.
Texas was not covered under section 5 until 1975 amendments to the Voting Rights Act, which added provisions to address discrimination against language minority groups. Like Arizona, Texas became covered because Spanish speakers at the time of the November 1972 general election constituted more than 5% of voting age citizens but the state still provided election information only in English.
Since becoming a covered jurisdiction, Texas and its political subdivisions have been the subject of 206 preclearance objections from the Justice Department - more than any other covered jurisdiction. Additionally, although Texas elected not to submit its 2011 legislative and congressional redistricting maps to DOJ for preclearance, a three-judge panel denied preclearance to all three of Texas' plans in 2012.
Of the objections since Texas became a covered jurisdiction, 73 occurred between 1975-1979, 53 were between 1980-1989, 65 were between 1990-1999, and 15 have been since 2000. In all, 112 of the objections were lodged by under Republican administrations and 94 during Democratic administrations.
Prior to the Obama administration, the Justice Department objected to all three of the state's redistricting plans in the 1981 cycle, the state house and state senate redistricting plans in the 1991 cycle, and the state house plan in the 2001 cycle. In 1991, DOJ also objected to the City of Dallas' proposed 10-4-1 city council plan.
In 2011-2012, in addition to opposing Texas' redistricting plans and Texas' voter ID law (SB 14), the Justice Department objected to redistricting plans for county commissions in Galveston and Nueces counties and to a change in the way the trustees for the Beaumont Independent School District would be elected.
If section 5 is upheld, Texas would remain covered by preclearance requirements until 2031, unless at some future juncture it qualifies for bailout under provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Under current law, to bailout as a state, Texas and all of its political subdivisions would need to have a 'clean record' under both section 5 and section 2 of the Voting Rights Act for a period at least ten years, in addition to meeting other statutory requirements.
Political subdivisions, such as counties, also can bailout on their own if they independently meet the bailout tests, though to date none have done so in Texas. Nationwide, roughly 125 jurisdictions have bailed out since 2009.
As a covered jurisdiction, Texas is required to submit all voting related changes either to the Justice Department or to a court in Washington D.C. for approval (preclearance) before they can be put into effect. This requirement includes changes in the manner of voting, candidacy requirements, abolition of an office, annexations, redistricting plans as well as things like the location of precinct polling places and changes in political parties' delegate selection rules.

This post was updated to add a missing bullet point that disappeared into the ether during reformatting. -- KH