Texas Style Gerrymandering
On Thursday March 30th, Washington lawyer, Sam Hirsch, briefed law makers and their staffs on Beacon Hill about the Texas redistricting case. Later in the day he was the star attraction at a fund-raiser held by Common Cause Massachusetts at the law office of Warren Tolman at Holland and Knight.
To both groups, he described the content and purposes behind the Texas mid-decade redistricting. Following the 2000 census, the Texas state legislature was mandated to draw new electoral district lines because the state had gained population to support two new Congressional seats. The state legislature was unable to agree on a redistricting map and, Accordingly, a plan was drawn by the Texas courts, a plan that was confirmed in its entirety by the United States Supreme Court. However the plan was felt to be unsatisfactory by the Republicans who believed that they had a majority of the voters in the state and were only too aware that the Democratic Texas delegation outnumbered the Republican delegation 17-15. Accordingly, following the mid-term elections at which Republicans took control of the Governorship, the State Senate and the State House of Representatives and under pressure from Congressman Tom Delay, the State attempted to redraw the election map for US Congressional Districts. Initially this strategy was unsuccessful as Democratic lawmakers, first State Representatives and later State Senators, fled the state to deny the Legislature a quorum. However, eventually the Legislature did devise a new redistricting plan and this was used for the general election in 2004.
According to its opponents, this plan had several flaws in addition to the fact that it was gerrymandered against the Democrats. Hirsch pointed out that one district shaped like a rattler's tail, wended its way across the center of the state (This is the light green district that goes from west to east half way across the state). It was designed in this manner so as to include the residence of a Republican Congressional candidate but exclude the residence of the Democratic incumbent of the previous district.
A second district is over 300 miles long and only about ten miles wide at several points (This is the orange district that goes from the bottom South West of the state and runs north to the center of the state). This district joined the Latino section at Austin to the Latino section of McAllen 300 miles away across many miles of sparsely populated Anglo farmland. This was to create a Latino district despite the fact that these two Latino majority towns were distant from one another and shared little in terms of community concerns with one another.
He then pointed to the third district in dispute. This district (colored purple on the map) that fills South West Texas was, the Democrats suggest, redesigned to protect a Latino Republican incumbent, Henry Bonilla, in a majority Latino district despite the fact that the incumbent's standing in the Latino community was rock bottom. Webb County in the south east part of the district was split according to the Plaintiff's counsel "at the block level and splitting 6 electoral precincts." This removed a large number of anti-Bonilla voters from the district.
Asked to predict the outcome of the case during the lively question and answer sessions following each presentation, Hirsch said that predicting Supreme Court decisions was impossible – a panel of experts had a 59% success rate which was only slightly better than chance.
Asked about remedies, Hirsch thought that relying on the Courts was too risky, and expecting Congress to curb the gerrymandering which was in both parties' interests – parties trade off safe seats in different parts of a state – was unlikely to bring relief. The only solution was to move to State based non-partisan commissions that allowed equal representatives of both parties together with neutral outsiders to draw the district boundaries. This is the solution proposed in Senate Bill 12 which will go to the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention in May with lots of bipartisan support in and out of the Governor's office and in the State Senate and House of Representatives. To pass, 101 votes are required. With pressure from the public on their legislators, successful passage of the Bill can be achieved.