Republican vs. Democrat, where do you draw the line?

By Melody MendozaEvery 10 years, district boundaries are redrawn to reflect changes in census data. In Texas, legislators redraw the lines of the voting districts within Texas to determine available seats for newly-elected officials to govern the state.

And last year was the year; The Legislature drew the district lines for the next 10 years, which arguably resulted in favor of Republicans.

But it didn’t stop there.

The Mexican American Legislative Caucus (MALC) chaired by Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, filed suit against the legislative maps arguing that redistricting violated the Voting Rights Act, which works to protect racial and ethnic minority voters’ right to elect a candidate of their choice.

The “maps drawn by Republican-controlled legislature prevent minority groups from electing their choice of candidate,” according to a story on usatoday.com.

A MALC spokesman said Fischer was unavailable for comment Nov. 30, but said students should keep up with redistricting because it sets the foundation of representation in government.

“Should minorities and communities of interest be split by the redistricting process, their voting power would be suppressed,” he said. “Without representative government there is no guarantee that officials will ever respond to your needs whether it’s support for education, financial aid, job assistance, government services, or even roads, power, and water in your area.”

MALC is the oldest and largest Latino legislative caucus in the United States. Since 1973, MALC has served the members of the Texas House of Representatives and their staffs, particularly in regard to matters of interest to the Mexican-American community of Texas, with the goal of providing a strong cohesive voice on those matters in the legislative process.

The group is suing also because they claim the maps split communities of interest, disenfranchise voters, stack minority populations and on and on, as stated in an article by The Texas Tribune.

So, what’s the time crunch? Nov. 28 candidates began filing for the March 6 primaries under the court-ordered redistricting maps.

The parties in the suit were asked to provide a reply by Dec. 1 to the State of Texas’ request for a stay of the court ordered interim maps, MALC spokesman stated. Then, Justice Antonin Scalia, or the full court, will provide an opinion on the stay.

To understand this story, let’s back up to Nov. 17 — the day a federal court offered new political maps of the state’s legislative districts to be used for the 2012 elections.

The Democrat view
In November, a panel of three federal judges in San Antonio, U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia, U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez and U.S. District Judge Jerry Smith, ordered the state to hold congressional and legislative elections under interim maps drawn by the court.

“Two of the judges were appointed by Republican presidents, meaning that this is not in any way an activist or liberal court as some opponents of the court-ordered maps have suggested,” the MALC spokesmen said of the judges.

The maps drawn by the Legislature haven’t been pre-cleared under the federal Voting Rights Act and can’t be used, and the maps used in past elections are out of date in view of new population numbers produced by the 2010 census, as stated in The Texas Tribune.

Because of the state’s voting history, Texas officials are required under the Voting Rights Act to gain approval from the federal government. Instead of seeking approval through the Democratic-led Department of Justice, Texas opted to take the map to the federal courts for approval, according to politico.com.

Fischer who heads the Mexican American Legislative Caucus said in a Texas Tribune story, “The leadership in the Legislature chose to ignore overwhelming Latino growth in our state and refused to adhere to the Voting Rights Act.

CNN reported that Fischer said 90 percent of the growth in Texas in the last decade was minority growth. “So you would expect these new congressional districts would reflect the minority populations that created the opportunity,” he said.

In the latest census, Texas grew by 4 million people and is getting four new congressional seats. The panel’s drafted maps fill three of the four new districts with Democrat and minority populations.

The Republican view

Attorney General Greg Abbott called the maps “fatally flawed” in the CNN article, and is now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hold elections until May 22.The Texas Tribune stated that six federal judges have rejected Abbott’s view that Texas’ redistricting maps comply with the law and should be implemented for Texas elections.

Additional objection

Jose Garza, an attorney for the MALC, said in a Texas Tribune story that “Redistricting is done on the backs of minority voters.”

He objected to the differences in populations of the state House districts — they range from a low of 159,428 to a high of 176,054 — and said those deviations allow legislators to manipulate the numbers to get different results.”Stacking, packing and cracking — the three traditional ways that racial gerrymandering is done,” he said. (Stacking is when low-income minority populations are put in districts with higher-income Anglos whose voting turnout is stronger and overpowers the minority groups at the ballot box. Packing is a term for putting more minorities into a political district than is necessary for them to control the outcomes of elections. And cracking is when a community is split between two or more districts to dilute its influence on election outcomes.)

To keep up on the latest developments and any of the past opinions, follow: http://txredistricting.org/.