On February 10, U.S. House member Joe Barton of Texas filed a brief with the 3-judge U.S. District Court in San Antonio that is hearing the redistricting lawsuit, advocating that the San Antonio court wait until the 3-judge U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. decides whether the legislature’s plan violates the Voting Rights Act.
Barton acknowledged that would delay redistricting quite a bit. His brief says, “Recognizing the interest of the statewide parties to conduct conventions, it is possible to bifurcate the presidential primary, if the Court so chooses. If the Court chooses to bifurcate the presidential primary, the other primaries could be held as late as the end of August. The presidential primary does not have a run-off election and programming andpreparing a single statewide ballot is relatively simple.” Thanks to TexasRedistricting blog for this news.
If Barton’s plan were to be adopted, one wonders what would happen to independent non-presidential candidate petition procedures. Texas says those petitions cannot be circulated until after the primary. Presumably, an independent candidate for office other than President would, under the Barton plan, not be allowed to start circulating until August, yet the state needs to print its ballots in early September.
Here is the map of Barton’s district as it was drawn after the 2000 census. It includes southeast Dallas and then a long swath of territory extending into rural areas that is barely attached to the Dallas part of the district. Barton was re-elected in 2010 with almost 70% of the vote.
ALL rigged gerrymander districts in Texas — PACK the Donkeys, CRACK the rest to get those 55 percent safe seat districts (even in BAD Elephant election years).
D and E switch in other States like CA, NY, etc.
Save Democracy —
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
— regardless of ALL of the EVIL math MORONS on all sides in Texas and elsewhere.
He notes that the presidential primary doesn’t have a runoff; and then suggests that the other primaries, which do, could be delayed until August.
The SA court appears to cruising the good ship Texas Primary close to an Italian island to get a better view.
Barton’s analysis is correct in that nobody has a clue when the legislative and congressional districts will be done.
The solution then is to hold the rest of the primary as soon as possible, including the presidential, senatorial, RRC, and 6 statewide judicial races (10 statewide) races, the SBOE races, appellate and district judicial races, and 100s of county races.
These can be held April 17, using the 2010 elections precincts with relatively minor modifications to conform to county and JP precinct changes. Many of the same polling places can be used (and if they aren’t available, they probably wouldn’t have been available without the redistricting miasma). Voter certificates can go out sooner rather than later.
Turnout will be for the presidential and senatorial races, and voters won’t even notice certain races not on the ballot. Voters will vote at familiar locations – with over half early voting.
Because the only federal ballots will be for presidential and senate races, they will be the same countywide, which may expedite sending them out 45 days before the election.
The Democrats and Republicans can then have their precinct conventions and their county/senatorial district conventions. These have absolutely zero to do with the nominations made at primaries, but are simply about internal party business and choosing delegates to the state convention. “senatorial district conventions” are actually just sub-county conventions held in larger counties.
The state conventions can be held in June (these are quite large with over 10,000 delegates; so renting halls and hotels are significant issues).
Convention-nominating parties can hold their precinct, county, and state conventions. These parties (Libertarian, Green, Justice, Constitution, American Elects, etc.) actually do make nominations at their conventions. Nominations for the legislature and congress are made at district conventions. These can’t be held now, but the selection of delegates to the state conventions can go on. The state conventions are in late June.
Once the precinct conventions are held, the 75-day supplementary petition period begins for the 11 parties attempting to qualify.
Independent candidates for offices other than the legislature and congress, can begin gathering signatures after the primary, as long as there is no runoff. The deadline for independent presidential candidates will have to be extended.
There will almost certainly be a GOP runoff for senate, perhaps on June 26.
MAYBE the legislative and congressional districts will be ready by late March. If so, then these can be held on June 26, concurrent with the runoff. It is important to note that only about 22% of these races have two filers. 36% have none, and 42% just one, who may be declared the party nominee. So in some areas there may be a few more races in addition to the senate runoff (there is also a possibility for a runoff in the RRC and one of the Supreme Court races).
On the Democratic side, there might not be any statewide runoffs, but then the congressional and legislative races will just be localized elections (this is quite normal for a runoff). And only 13% of these races have 2 or more candidates.
The legislative and congressional districts may require election precinct changes. But these can always be accomplished by splitting precincts.. The same polling place can be used for both parts of a split precinct, with voters directed to the correct room or voting booth for their part of the precinct.
Voters will be able to return to the same polling place (except when that is not available). At early voting, any voter in a county can vote at any early voting location. There can be 100s of ballot formats and they are magically generated. I’m sure they can handle split precincts.
Turnout will be for the senate runoff. But the legislative and congressional candidates will have the voting rosters from April. They will surely contact all those voters. Someone who skipped a presidential primary is unlikely to show up for a runoff.
If the legislative and congressional maps are ready by late March, it is possible that the convention-nominating parties can hold those district conventions on scheduled in April and May. The long lead times for filing are for the primaries – they don’t that much time for conventions. And once voters vote in a primary or attend a minor party convention, they are stuck with that party for the rest of the year.
Independent legislative and congressional candidates can start collecting signatures in June. There can be a special ruling that they don’t have to wait until after a runoff. The only point of that is to prevent voters who voter in the runoff from signing a petition. But there will already have been two primaries for that party, they will be quite unlikely to skip the June election and then show up in August.
It might be that the district boundaries aren’t finalized until summer. If that happens, it would be better to just wait until November and have congressional and legislative elections as special elections concurrent with the general election as was done in 1996 and 2006.
The alignment of TX-6 is quite similar to its historical alignment from 1910 onward, including from time to time parts of Tarrant and Dallas counties and areas southward along the Trinity and Brazos rivers.
http://www.tlc.state.tx.us/redist/historical_congress.htm
It is the district represented by Phil Gramm, who was from College Station. The only exception was the 1991 fiasco by Ann Richards, Martin Frost, and Eddie Bernice Johnson.
The district doesn’t include any of Dallas County. It includes SE Tarrant County, particularly Arlington.
Texas state officials would have been far, far better off if they had just accepted the maps of the San Antonio court and not gone running to the U.S. Supreme Court. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruling came down, saying the San Antonio court should do the map-drawing all over again, practically everyone said that was good news for the Republican Party of Texas. But it wasn’t.
#4 Have you read the minority opinion on the maps drawn by the 2-1 majority of the SA Court? The unfortunate thing is that the internal machinations of the SA Court may not be subject to discovery. The SA Court was either stupid, dishonest, or duped by their clerks or persons from the Legislative Council.
At the time, you had the USDOJ arguing that the preclearance trial in DC should be delayed even longer, because the “interim” maps should be considered the “benchmark”. That is, Texas was trying to change the maps that were drawn because the court in DC was taking so long.
As soon as the Supreme Court ruled, the DC court ordered a trial date.
What should have happened is that the SA Court should never have held a trial until the preclearance proceedings were complete. The case was simply not ripe. A true interim map would have been like those done in 2001 based solely on the existing map with minimal changes to equalize population.
Or the SA court should have simply let the other primaries go forward.
After the recent election data (i.e. 2008 Obama and 2010 Perry) is combined with the census / race data, the gerrymander programs light up like a Christmas tree — on how and where to PACK and CRACK the gerrymander districts.
ONE EVIL exercise by the EVIL robot party hacks — the courts are BRAIN DEAD IGNORANT — esp. SCOTUS in its Jan 20. 2012 piece of JUNK opinion.
The DEVIL MORONS are playing their EVIL MORON game about how many marginal gerrymander districts have to be created to give the appearance of some sort of quota Democracy system — combinations of white/anglo, black, hispanic – Donkeys and Elephants – age ranges – rich/poor, etc.
ONE EVIL mess — compounded by the split voting precincts math — to pack Donkey hispanics especially.
HITLER would be very proud of the EVIL Elephants in making their political concentration camps.
Same for STALIN in EVIL Donkey controlled States.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
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#2: Unfortunately since none of the courts ruling thus far have concerned the “convention” parties in Texas (2012 are Libertarians and Greens), so according to the TX Secretary of State, their precinct and county convention WILL PROCEED as according to statute. That means in March. Even though some districts don’t have lines, and none of us have voter registration cards!
http://sos.state.tx.us/elections/candidates/guide/minor.shtml