On November 8, a 3-judge U.S. District Court issued an order that reveals they believe the Texas U.S. House and legislative district boundaries violate the federal Voting Rights Act. This may mean that the Texas March 6 primary will ultimately be postponed.
The case is State of Texas v U.S.A., cv-11-1303, in the District of Columbia. The three judges are U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Thomas B. Griffith, a Bush Jr. appointee; and two U.S. District Court Judges, Rosemary M. Collyer, another Bush Jr. appointee; and Beryl A. Howell, an Obama appointee. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the news.
This is the case where Texas is seeking preclearance for its legislative and congressional districts. The court did not issue summary judgement for Texas, so a full trial will have to be held. The court said that it believed that Texas did not use the proper standard for determining whether a district is a minority opportunity district. Texas took a district that had a 58% Hispanic citizen voting age population and increased that (while reducing the population to meet OMOV standards). The USDOJ has suggested that they shouldn’t use static percentage standards and should have predicted how actual elections should turn out, and claims that Texas deliberately chose areas where Hispanics were more likely to vote for a Republican or not vote at all.
The district court hearing the cases in Texas has said that it would draw an “interim” plan if if did not appear that federal court in DC would be preclearing the plan any time soon. So now they can issue their plan. The reason they had already changed the filing dates was to give them some more time.
Since they changed the opening of the filing period to November 28, that means that they anticipate issuing a new map before that time. If you look at how they changed the dates, they only added one week for the filing deadline, which was what they were told was the last possible date in order to prepare ballots and mail them overseas by January 21 (45 days before March 6).
They moved the start of the filing period more, because presumably candidates can decide to run in a shorter period of time (and they probably assume that no one will attempt to petition to get on the primary ballot).
It is conceivable that the districts drawn by the legislature will be precleared some time next year, and the fall elections held as special elections (Top 2 Open Primary).
Minority rule gerrymanders in ALL houses of all State legislatures.
1/2 votes x 1/2 gerrymander districts = 1/4 control.
Much worse due to primary math.
The MORON courts and media are brain dead ignorant about 3rd grade gerrymander math.
P.R. and App.V.