What Will Become Of Texas’ Redistricting?

Well, I could’ve said “I told you so!” but I’ll reserve that trite comment for another occasion.

Instead, I’m simply going to register my dismay at the current state of affairs surrounding the redistricting process in Texas. As I mentioned previously, a federal three judge panel sitting in San Antonio found that both the state and congressional maps drawn by the Texas legislature during the 2011 session violated the Voting Rights Act.

In a separate decision another federal three judge panel sitting in DC said that the Texas redistricting maps violated Sec. 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The Department of Justice concurred with the courts during their review as they are asked to do whenever a Sec. 5 violation is suspected.

Bueno, el chico, Greg Abbott, the Attorney General of Texas decided that he was being ganged up on so he called for his big brother, Antonin Scalia, who monitors the Federal District in Texas, to come to his help. Because all the Latinos, led by Nina Perales of MALDEF and her anglo camaradas, were just too tough and he couldn’t handle things by himself. Antonin got at least five of his Supreme Court Justice camaradas to sign an order blocking the implementation of an interim plan that the Texas panel had ordered used during this election period.

Mind you this was an interim plan so we could have elections! And let’s not forget that the majority of the growth that led to Texas’ allotment of four new congressional seats was mostly due to Latino population growth in Texas.

Y no, los canejos judges issued the stay and now everything has been turned out to be a desmadre! The entire redistricting process has been thrown into chaos because Antonin wants to meddle in local affairs like he did in the Florida General Election of 2000 when a divided Supreme Court wrote the worst page in constitutional jurisprudence and handed the presidency to George Bush.

To back off of my facitiousness a little, I think the reason that SCOTUS ( Supreme Court of the United States for the uninitiated) interfered was that neither of the three judge panels — which by the way have four Republican judges sitting on them — really issued an opinion. They simply issued statements saying that the redistricting maps drawn by the state violated the Voting Rights Act, but there was not really any clear rationale set forth. All three courts were trying to act expeditiously because of the pending elections but in doing so they just created more problems.

In the justices’ defense all of this could have been averted if the Texas legislature had not been trying to turn back the clock and draw disricts that insured the minority anglo, conservative communities continued to dominate the legislative process. The legislative redistricters refused to pay attention to and understand the rapidly changing demographics of the state. Texas is becoming Latino, by 2020, it will be a majority Latino and Spanish will be used increasingly in everyday business and governmental exchanges. Instead of creating legislative representational districts that are broadly representative and inclusive, the current group of Texas legislators are bound and determined to maintain the apartheid-like legislative structure that has existed since the 1870s.

This must stop. We the people require appropriate representation and this can only be done with fairly drawn legislative districts that give every voter an opportunity of electing a candidate of their choice, not a candidate that is the choice of a bunch of political opratives. Pero, like everything else I guess we just have to wait and see how things play themselves out.