Simple statement of fact, dip . Employed, middle class people vote in higher percentages than gang bangers.
Barry's got a HUGE TOOL
In 2004, 5.1 million Hispanics voted for Democratic candidates, 4.3 million for Republicans.
In 2008, the ratio changed, with 7.8 million voting Democratic and 3.6 million voting Republican, according to data compiled by New Policy Ins ute.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0...tml?view=print
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...g-case/251120/Perry v. Perez and its companion cases, argued Monday on an emergency basis, raise a highly technical question -- what standard should a District Court use to fashion an "interim" legislative districting map while the state's proposed map awaits "preclearance" under § 5 of the Voting Rights Act?
Narrow and abstruse? Yes. But the answer could determine which party wins as many as four House seats from Texas this November.
The VRA is one of the bedrocks of the American voting system. Passed originally in the aftermath of the March at Selma, it aims to keep federal and state elections free of racial and ethnic discrimination.The Act's § 2 covers not only the issuance of ballots to individual voters but drawing of districts and the conduct of voting.
But for a number of states, the act imposes an additional hurdle. In 1975, Congress found that Texas had used a number of tricks over the years to frustrate the political opportunities of Latino and African-American voters. That made Texas a "covered jurisdiction." It can't implement any change in voting procedures or districts unless it receives "preclearance." Either a federal court or the U.S. Department of Justice can decide in advance whether the change has the purpose or effect of restricting minority voters or "diluting" their voting power --for instance, by breaking up minority communities to ensure that they don't have a majority in any one district.
"Unless and until" precleared, the statute says, the change may not take effect. In the majority of cases, that just means the old system remains in place. But that won't work in redistricting cases, particularly in a year ending in 2. The Census every 10 years produces new population figures; those figures must be the basis of new Congressional and legislative districts in the next off-year election. All those districts -- not only for the House but for state legislatures and other elected state bodies -- must be roughly equal in population (the principle of "one person one vote.")
In 2010, Texas scored major population growth, enough to gain the state four new House districts. The legislature, dominated by Republicans, began the tortuous, highly politicized process of redrawing every congressional and legislative district in the state. This process was complete by spring; after considering the plans for a few weeks, Texas Governor Rick Perry signed them. By a bizarre coincidence, the state's enacted plan actually reduced the number of minority "ability to elect" districts, which lean Democratic -- even though most of the state's population growth was among Latinos.
The state didn't submit the plan to the Justice Department (which is required to respond within 60 days). Instead, it asked (as the statute allows) the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to "preclear" the plan, a more time-consuming process. Meanwhile, private plaintiffs back in Texas brought suit against the new plan, asking a court to rule that it did violate § 2 of the VRA -- that it intentionally discriminated by race. A federal court usually won't make such a ruling until "preclearance" is complete.
But the three-judge District Court now had a problem. Primary elections in Texas are approaching. What districting plan could Texas use? It can't use the old plan -- there aren't enough congressional districts, for one thing, and the old legislative districts are no longer roughly equal in population. But, it reasoned, it also can't use the new Texas plan -- the VRA clearly says no such plan can take effect "unless and until" it is "precleared." So the court devised its own plan, one that it assessed as not diluting minority strength and roughly equalizing districts. That plan is likely to produce more Democratic victors than is the Texas plan.
Texas rushed to the Supreme Court to enjoin the district court plan. Texas wants the Supreme Court to allow the new Texas plan to go forward. A court owes "deference" to the legislature, it argues. If not, § 5 involves intrusions on Texas's "state sovereignty." The government and the plaintiffs base their arguments on the language of the statute. Preclearance is required; presumptions of deference are specifically reversed in this context. To allow Texas to use its uncleared plan, they suggest, would reward the state for protracting the preclearance process.
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-te...as-2452183.phpJustice Sonia Sotomayor quizzed the state and the plaintiffs on a "drop dead date" for the Supreme Court to rule to meet current election schedules in Texas.
"Why can't all this be pushed back, and wouldn't that eliminate a lot of problems we are grappling with in this case?" asked Justice Samuel Alito.
The justices explored the possibility of pushing the Texas primaries back to June 26, which would give them until mid-February to rule.
The San Antonio federal court already approved a deal between the two major political parties in Texas to push the primaries back from March 6 to April 3. However, it requires redistricting plans be finalized by Feb. 1.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/supre...ng-rights-act/Enacted in 1965 to combat pervasive discrimination against black voters in the South, the VRA has exceeded expectations in excising that shameful phenomenon. Its application now, however, stymies the orderly implementation of free and fair elections, particularly in jurisdictions subject not only to the general prohibition on race-based voter discrimination, but also the Section 5 preclearance requirement.
Originally conceived as a check on states where discrimination was prevalent in the 1960s, preclearance requires certain jurisdictions to obtain federal approval before changing any election laws. (The Section 5 list is bizarre: six of the eleven states of the Old Confederacy — and certain counties in three others — plus Alaska, Arizona, and some counties or townships in five other states as diverse as New Hampshire and South Dakota. Curiously, (only) three New York counties are covered, all boroughs in New York City. What is going on in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan that is not in Queens or Staten Island?) To obtain preclearance, proposed changes may not result in “retrogression,” a reduction in minority voters’ ability to elect their “preferred” candidates.
Section 5 was originally a valuable tool in the fight against systemic disenfranchisement, but now facilitates the very discrimination it was designed to prevent. Indeed, the prohibition on retrogression effectively requires districting that assures that minority voters are the majority in a set number of districts — an inherently race-conscious mandate. The law, most recently renewed in 2006 for another 25 years, is based on deeply flawed assumptions and outdated statistical triggers, and flies in the face of the Fifteenth Amendment’s requirement that all voters be treated equally.
samePut simply, the VRA’s success has undermined its continuing viability; courts and legislatures struggle mightily and often fruitlessly to satisfy both the VRA’s race-based mandate and the Fifteenth Amendment’s equal treatment guarantee. We also point out that Section 5′s selective applicability precludes the establishment of nationwide districting standards, confounding lower courts and producing different, often contradictory, treatment of voting rights in different states — in large part because Sections 2 and 5 themselves conflict with each other. We note that regardless of the outcome of this litigation, it is unlikely that Texas will have fully legal electoral maps in time to administer the 2012 elections in a fair and efficient manner.
http://www.law.com/jsp/tx/PubArticle...368&slreturn=1What was billed as a possible U.S. Supreme Court showdown over the cons utionality of the Voting Rights Act on Monday turned instead into narrower debate over how the redistricting of Texas legislative districts should proceed.
The Court devoted an unusual 75 minutes of time to hastily scheduled arguments in Perry v. Perez, a tussle over the new districts drawn by the Texas Legislature to reflect the latest decennial census. Because Texas is a state that must, under the Voting Rights Act, obtain federal preclearance before it changes any of its electoral processes, the case seemed like a new battlefront for states that chafe under the law.
But the justices seemed uninterested in the broader question of whether it is cons utional for Congress to force jurisdictions, mostly in the South, to get federal approval for its district maps. Only Justice Anthony Kennedy mused aloud at one point that the law puts Texas at a "tremendous disadvantage" in planning its elections, in contrast to the mainly Northern states that are not covered by the preclearance requirement.
Later in the argument, however, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. went out of his way to close off discussion of that bigger issue when he said, "The cons utionality of the Voting Rights Act is not at issue here, right?" The preclearance provision barely survived a cons utional attack in a 2009 case, also from Texas — Northwest Austin Utility District Number One v. Holder — and the issue seemed to be off the table again on Monday.
http://www.seolawfirm.com/2012/01/su...cting-dispute/Minority population increases accounted for almost 90 percent of Texas’s overall growth between 2000 and 2010. Hispanics led the way, adding approximately 2.8 million people to the state’s citizenry. [7] But the maps drawn by the Texas Legislature decreased the number of state House districts in which minorities had a likelihood of electing their preferred representative from 50 to 45. [8]
http://www.miller-mccune.com/legal-a...-rights-38950/The bind confronting the court is that there is no way to purge the process of potential gamesmanship. Before the San Antonio court drew its maps, there were no lawful districts: Existing districts were malapportioned, and the enacted plan had not been precleared. Texas law provides few criteria for state legislative districts, and none at all for Congress.
This vacuum creates bad incentives no matter what the legal regime. If the Supreme Court tells courts like San Antonio to defer to a state’s enacted plan, states could drag their feet on preclearance in D.C., in order to implement their wishes through courts back home. If not, those who oppose state plans could drag their feet in D.C. to delay implementing state maps that would be precleared validly in due course. And it’s all complicated by the prospect that the interim plan lines could themselves feed back into the preclearance decision. Yeek.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...eme-court.htmlThe U.S. Supreme Court threw out judge-drawn voting districts for this year’s state and federal elections in Texas (BEESTX) in a ruling that may help Republicans keep control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
I think it's a good ruling even though I don't agree with the way the State government proceeded with this. It's good to see that States rights are alive and well.
did someone kill off all the states' rights cheerleaders and chavinistic Texans around here? it's like the freaking tomb in here lately.
(I know, I know, some were driven off by the gratuitous snark.)
I suspect we'll hear about them again shortly after they deem States rights to be trampled again somehow.
Its because most of the people who cheerlead for states rights, only do so when the federal law does not support their political view. JMHO.
I don't really support gerrymandering no matter which party does it, but there really isn't a better way that I know of. No matter who draws the map someone isn't going to like it, and I'd rather the gerrymandered boundaries be drawn by an elected representative body than an appointed judge/judges.
Preclearance seems a bit outdated at this point.. I wonder if they reassessed the situation for states requiring it in 2006.
I agree in theory that a legislative body should be better able to draw representative maps, but the actuality of the history of these things is pretty unsettling, and is what led to the Justice Department enforcing the Voting Rights Act in the way that they did.
It was the gerrymandered districts drawn up in the deep south that the law was passed to correct, and that the Justice Department is charged with enforcing.
This decision doesn't mean that the legislature's districts are legal under the VRA; it merely says that until the Justice Department renders its findings, the judiciary cannot replace the legislative attempt.
I think the media is going to make much more of this than it really is.
I agree in theory as well but maps drawn by the justice department are gerrymandering just like the maps drawn by legislators. Both en ies have their own agendas.
Heard about this today.
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/...stricting-caseThe Texas state attorneys defending the state’s GOP-drawn redistricting plans from court challenges have reached out to settle litigation, according to sources in the state. The settlement would give minority groups and Democrats what they’ve been demanding from the start: more heavily minority, Democratic-leaning House seats.
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