Here we go again... Texas gets four new seats this year. Under the Repubs plan, they would gain 3 seats and Dems one, even though the population growth looks like: Whites: 465,000 Blacks: 522,570 Hispanic: 2,800,000 This is shaping up as a story with all the ugliness of the DeLay redistricting scheme combined with Bush v. Gore where the SC overrules a lower court for nakedly apparent partisan reasons. At least that Harpie Sandra Day O'Connor isn't on the bench anymore. Wouldn't want to inconvenience her with the results of an election.
You aren't that stupid. Why don't we look at how you fall over any black GOP public figure in an effort to demonstrate a non-racist face? You are well aware of the demographics involved.
Texas, as a Southern state that must comply with the pre-clearance process set up in the Voting Rights Act, must, like all other states, ensure the lines are drawn fairly to not exclude appropriate minority representation. In the last election, Hispanics voted Democratic at a roughly 2-1 margin and Blacks were higher than 9-1. That the Republican legislature got 3 Repub seats out of those numbers is a tough sell to any fair-minded person just looking at the numbers, much less the lines on the map that were created. But you knew this already didn't you?
Demographics are destiny. And it's not immigrants, but American citizens that are pushing the Hispanic voter numbers up. It is just a matter of time before Texas goes like California did... reliably Republican dominated by enclaves of Conservative whites to reliably Democratic dominated by minorities. Hey, there's always Mississippi or Idaho, but the Mexican food sucks.
Scalia is a joke. The basis of this decision is so hypocritical. He and the Conservative majority cited the electoral college voting date as the main justification to prevent a full recount of Florida in 2000 (Bush v. Gore). Specifically the majority stated that the electoral college had to vote by a legally mandated day and that day could not be moved or changed without a new piece of legislation. And a full recount couldn't be completed by the day of certification so they ruled against it. In this case, Scalia basically ignores the fact that candidates have to file to run in districts within a few days and he won't hear the case until after that. So are they going to allow candidates to re-file? Do they have to delay the primary? It infuriates me that he put the electoral college on a pedestal but was perfectly ok with throwing the Texas filing process into chaos. Right now people are filing for districts with no understanding as to what those districts will actually look like. Furthermore, the district court originally agreed to hear a full case on the original redistricting and admitted that it would take too long so they mandated that a court write a temporary map so we can have an election. Scalia stays the temporary map but also can't re-instate the original map since that one is also under lawsuit. Scalia is trash. Bunch of sour grapes because Republicans tried to blatantly disregard the Voting Rights Act.
I don't care about their ethnicity. I care about the huge number of uneducated poor that are immigrating to America. Far more than our economy needs and far more than we can support.
Then start a thread about that topic. This is a topic about American voters and the machinations of redistricting.
To the party in power (Dem or Rep) it is called redistricting. To the party out of power it is called gerrymandering. Democrats do this too when they are in power.
How about we just have an independent commission do it (and then Republicans can try to impeach people on the commission when the plan doesn't favor them enough.)
Which still doesn't excuse it. It's wrong no matter who does it, and hopefully you'll side with those against this wrong doing.
Well that and what they did violated federal law. The Voting Rights Act is pretty explicit in its protections against the dilutions of minority voting strength. The other rules of redistricting have more or less been tossed aside except this one provision. And frankly the republicans just got greedy. Only one of the new districts could have been labeled a minority district and even that was debatable since it was more or less a slightly altered district from the old map. All they had to do was create two legitimate new districts (even though there probably should be 3) that are minority districts. Also doing things like moving high turnout minorities into strong republican districts and adding low turnout minorities to new districts in order to pretend that they are minority majority districts is despecable. They could have at least tried to comply. And to top it off, Greg Abbott was cocky enough to think that he could bypass the DOJ and just get a district court to sign off on his blatantly illegal maps. Thankfully, this might be the last time this will ever happen. The dynamics of the state will shift in 10 years to a point where minorities will simply be too high a percentage to be able to elect Republican supermajorities. They are in for a death like the old Democrats faced in the 80s and 90s in Texas. Hope they enjoy wasting away their time in the sun with crap like this.
timing of the added seats seams bizarre. this was an interim redistricting that was overturned. A redistricting decided by a three person panel -- with the dissenting panelist strongly opposed (or so it seems). all this decision does is defer the redistricting to the original hearing in Jan 2012. Which sound more reasonable, no?
With all due respect, have you ever studied American history? Because what you posted is the history of this country. We were built on the backs of poor, largely uneducated (until they came here and were able to go to a public school) immigrants. Somehow, someway, we managed to grow to become the country we are now... the leader of the Free World, the most powerful militarily, and the largest economy, with the largest (if shrinking) middle class, on the planet. All due, ultimately, to what you are complaining about. Oh, and this is the most radical Supreme Court in recent history. The majority uses precedent as toilet paper. They have contempt for the Constitution, while babbling like loons that the Constitution is only understood by them. The Court is a disgrace to the United States of America.
The founding father never intended the supreme court to have any real power and now they have the power to shape elections.
Founding fathers The founding fathers did intend for the court to have real power. Checks and balances and all that good stuff. But honestly, who cares what the founding fathers thought and why should we? It doesn't really matter what the founding fathers intended since they could not have possibly understood that at an unknown time in an unknown manner with an unknown cause some unknown unknowable would have a unknown effect that would require an unknown unknowable response. The win for Republicans comes at no surprise. There are no judicially manageable standards for redistricting. Bigtexxx like his predecessors in Montgomery Alabama can have the minority "sit in the back" of the bus; they can enjoy a decade long celebration of disenfranchisement and probably another one in 2020, but eventually they will have to put up their kazoos and put away their silly looking white hats as the inexorable tide will eventually overcome their best efforts. Then, 50 years from now, school children will learn about Texas redistricting in their history class and ask their parents why? The bigotry of the past will seem so quaint all the while as we find a new way to disenfrancise the new guy on the block.
