Good thing there's more of us republicans in the suburbs + the rest of the state. Remember -- City of Houston = 2,000,000 people Houston Metro area = 6,000,000 people PWN3D
Yes, we were a nation built on poor immigration, but now we have 1. social programs which didn't exist then 2. a sluggish economy 3. a humongous deficit 4. high unemployment 5. domestic oil to fuel economic growth Times have changed, an immigration policy that made sense a century ago, or half a century ago, no longer makes sense today. We simply cannot continue to add hundreds of thousands of poor every single year and not expect to see a decline in our living standards.
Districts were a bad idea from the get-go and an invitation for corruption. Who is the genius who came up with this idea? Even when it's "fair" it isn't fair.
Article 1, Section 2, United States Constitution: Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative... There's also Federalist Number 54, 55, and 56, written by Madison or Hamilton.
So, even the founding fathers can be dumb. Still, we could have assigned representatives by county. Or we could have had a long list of candidates and tell people to choose their 32 favorite ones. Lottery. Just about anything is better than the redistricting bs we go through. We could satisfy the Constitution without districts.
Parliamentary list systems aren't much better either. List systems allow parties to sneak in poor candidates because people don't even look at lists. Districts were designed to shift the focus to the candidate themselves. If our courts enforced the basic rules of redistricting, (i.e. compactness, keeping communities together, etc..) this wouldn't be as big a deal. The issue is that the only fundamental barrier to totally arbitrary districts is the voting rights act. It's the set of rules left that courts even bother to enforce. I think a properly enforced redistricting system with single member districts is better than a list system. But our system is so broken now that in all honesty I might support a list system and just say to hell with the winner take all model. At least your vote counts in a list system as opposed to our rigged district system.
Even properly enforced, I don't like what it produces. Redistricting ends up being some kind of proxy race war, with the whites, blacks and hispanics jockeying for seats. "Properly enforced" ends up meaning that blacks, whites, and hispanics are each given enough rep seats to placate them. I'm not comfortable with governance by racial identity. The whole thing should go.
For those who havent been following this story, but the US Supreme Court finally heard the texas redistricting case. It doesnt look like they'll use this case to kill of pre-clearance. They sound like they want to defer to the DC court that is reviewing the case which would mean we would get an additional set of maps. Regardless, it looks like the Voting Rights Act will live another day. http://www.npr.org/2012/01/09/144923162/high-court-hears-redistricting-case
Actually, having an influx of low paid immigrants from all over the world is probably part of what makes Texas cheaper to live than most other states of our size and not as soul-crushingly poor and miserable as the desert and swamps on either side of us.
The Supreme Court ruled today on the Texas interim maps and threw them out. (victory for Republicans I guess) but then they ordered the San Antonio court to redraw them to respect the state legislature but create remedies for section 2 violations and violations of "reasonable probability" for section 5 (whatever the hell that means). In summation, they basically ordered the San Antonio court to actually justify their map changes in the context of the voting rights act, so we might get the exact same map again if the court can justify what they did. What a ****show.
Looks like the Republicans are on the verge of caving in on redistricting. If they don't come to a settlement the primary will be pushed forward which will screw everything up since we have municipal elections in May (and we cant have voting machines programmed for both elections and a primary) and the convention right after that. In other words, the primary has to be in April. Otherwise you either interfere with local elections or have the primary after the state conventions (which clearly makes no sense) In total this could cost each party hundreds of thousands of dollars (with the Republicans getting hit harder because they actually have to hold a real presidential primary). Also the state picks up a lot of the tab so it'll cost our already bankrupt government even more. So in short, the attorney general is trying to craft a settlement and from the looks of it the Democrats and minorities will get almost everything they want. Lloyd Doggett would get to keep his district and Democrats would pick up 3 to 4 seats in the house. Man the Republicans ****ed up big time. http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box...se-in-on-huge-win-in-texas-redistricting-case
Thanks for the info, geeimsobored. I hope this is correct. I won't hold my breath, though. Not until I see an actual settlement. Yes, the state Republicans overreached. They couldn't be content with the damage they had already done to minority representation, and to the Democratic Party, with every White conservative Democrat getting gerrymandered out of office, even though most were being reelected in Republican majority districts, districts with Republican voters who liked their representation. As always, they had to be even more greedy. How I hope it blows up in their faces.
Basically the real story is that Texas Republicans actually violated the voting rights act by trying to limit hispanic and black representation in congress. Pretty interesting. I am sure Republicans will do really well with Hispanics and Blacks. No wonder they are desperate to settle...last thing you want is Florida Hispanics learning that Republicans are trying to limit their power in Texas.
The DC Court just upheld Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Assuming that Texas appeals (which they will), this is off to our wonderful Supreme Court to decide. http://txredistricting.org/post/23297804975/breaking-dc-circuit-upholds-the-constitutionality-of
The SC will rule 5-4 to toss out section 5. It's pretty obvious that the SC is now just an extension of the Republican Party. I think history is going to judge it very harshly as perhaps one of the darkest most backwards time in our nation. Hard to believe that after all the progress of the 20th century - so much has been rolled back by this SC. They selected a president to kick of the 21st century - a clear violation of the separation of powers. They turned elections into a farce with citizens united basically making corruption constitutional, they will over turn health care, limit the rights of gays, and now roll back part of the VRA to limit power of minorities. That's about of a right wing of a court as we've had in at least 50 years.
