US House Redistricting: Texas

[Bacon King]

Interesting, read, jim. Those annexation laws are actually pretty strict compared to Georgia, though- cities can even annex roadways without annexing the property on either side. The western boundary of my hometown of Auburn is just a patchwork of territory randomly in and outside of city limits, with the city limits doing crazy things like travelling along a road, taking in a cow pasture to reach another road, then extending further along that one. There's an intersection where the town is to the southeast, but the only city territory is the northwest corner. On one smaller road out of town you pass five "Auburn City Limits" signs in about three miles.

And then there's Braselton, a small town along the interstate that extended it's city limits two miles down the highway to get tax revenue from the gas station at the next exit down, and (more importantly) have a longer stretch of interstate to catch speeders.

I'll end my off-topic tangent here, but such crazy things like you describe do happen pretty often.   

[Bacon King]

Wow Auburn has an ugly shape.

Indeed. Here's a map for those keeping score at home:



Also, just as an addendum to my earlier post, Braselton has since expanded to encompass the area between the two interstate exits in a normal fashion. Auburn is ridiculous, though.

[Bacon King]

It's already used in several places. NC-13 for example.

I'm struggling to think of an example other than that one in use currently.

GA-08 and GA-11 also had point contiguity before the Republicans did the mid-decade redistricting in 2005.

[Bacon King]

and now for an amusing lawsuit...

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7508489.html

From the link, it looks like the same type of lawsuit was successful after the 2000 census.

[Bacon King]

IMHO there's a difference between uniting technically separate but similar areas on the west side of the city of Chicago (plus a couple inner burbs), which looks ugly but is not as ugly as it looks, and uniting downtown (and south) Dallas with downtown Forth Worth - let alone doing so twice.
Which, of course, is why I drew my districts in Dallas and its immediate suburbs alone. Though I did cross the county line.
But yeah, to get the Black district over 50% you need to draw it first and put all the Black-and-Hispanic areas in it. Drawing a Hispanic district from what's left after that requires heading to Fort Worth, I think.

I suspect that the two neighborhoods linked in Chicago are just as politically and culturally distinct as the two linked in my Metroplex map.

The two neighborhoods aren't even the same nationality, right? IIRC one is mostly Mexican while the other is predominantly Puertorican.

[Bacon King]

There's no such presumption involved, actually. For a VRA district to be required, a minority group (that is large enough and inhabits territory compact enough to meet the Gingles threshold) must be shown to vote as a block for specific candidates that would not be elected otherwise.

[Bacon King]

Can somebody please describe the new TX-27/whichever district contains Brownsville?  The mother of a friend of mine is running for that seat.

Brownsville is in the new TX-34. ~80% Hispanic, ~60% Obama district. Most of the territory is everything from the old 27th district south of Corpus Christi, which was moved northward up the coast to give newly-elected Republican Blake Farenthold a more favorable district.

[Bacon King]

Sweet!  My friend's mother was Solomon Ortiz's chief of staff for twenty years, so she has a pretty good chance I should think.

Edit:  Wait, she still filed in the 27th for some reason, despite living in Brownsville and it being a more favorable, open seat.  Hmm.

Yeah, looking this up myself, I'm not really sure what's going with the 27th and 34th districts; there are several people from the Brownsville area running in both districts, according to the internet. I'm having a hard time finding anything concrete, but I think at some point the numbers might have gotten switched?

edit- yes, looking on the different candidate's websites, it seems like the numbers got flipped between the map that passed the legislature and the court-drawn map.

[Bacon King]

Sweet!  My friend's mother was Solomon Ortiz's chief of staff for twenty years, so she has a pretty good chance I should think.

Edit:  Wait, she still filed in the 27th for some reason, despite living in Brownsville and it being a more favorable, open seat.  Hmm.

Yeah, looking this up myself, I'm not really sure what's going with the 27th and 34th districts; there are several people from the Brownsville area running in both districts, according to the internet. I'm having a hard time finding anything concrete, but I think at some point the numbers might have gotten switched?

The legislative map renumbered that district as 34 so Farenholdt could keep his number. The court map that the SCOTUS tossed renumbered it back to 27. So depending on when you filed, you might have filed for the wrong district.

I realized that and edited my post, but it looks like you beat me to it! Nevertheless, there's a special one-day extension of the filing deadline on February 1st, so presumably the map will be settled by then and every candidate will be able to file appropriately.

[Bacon King]

Does anyone have the PVI for TX-33?  Thanks

62.5% Obama, according to this: http://d2o6nd3dubbyr6.cloudfront.net/media/documents/PlanC220_RED206_2008G_Statewides.pdf