US House Redistricting: Texas

[Verily]

Considering the make up of next years legislature, a likely speaker who isn't afraid to Gerrymander, and a douchebag governor,  Doggett probably won't get such a nice looking district as the one in your map shows.

Yeah, he will. Austin is growing too fast and is too strongly Democratic to try to split up any more. It would just make Republican incumbents vulnerable. The Republicans will give Doggett a very safe seat and pack the Democrats in Austin in.

[Verily]

I do think it's interesting that Wesberry was decided at a time when the non-citizen adult population in the U.S. was likely at a low for the century... just before immigration reform. However, it was also before the mass registration of African-American citizens in the South, so there were surely districts in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas with a relatively low number of citizens. Did Wesberry comment on any of those districts for the purpose of de facto citizens' equal rights to representation vs. adults (not that African-Americans were represented by their representatives)? Did the courts make a nod to the fact that citizenship did not correlate with voting rights, which is a difference in analogizing that population to non-citizens and children today? I would think that if the court had concerns about districts with roughly equal populations but very different sized electorates, they would have seized the opportunity to say something. Whites in predominantly white areas surely were at a disadvantage to whites in heavily minority areas even when the districts were of equal population, as Wesberry decided was the best solution.

Hmm? Blacks in those places were always citizens, even when they couldn't vote. They met the 14th Amendment requirement of being born in the United States. After all, restrictions on black voting did not consist in laws actually banning blacks from voting (to which the courts would have immediately acknowledged they had a constitutional right) but rather on denying all people with low education levels or the inability to pay a fee the vote, or else through extralegal intimidation.

[Verily]

Damn.

GRIT has drawn what they claim to be a 29-7 map. No new district in Dallas, Gonzales and Doggett are merged. Bexar county is shattered.

http://gritnewsletter.org/?p=72

No surprise that it is possible. It is probably possible to go one further, maybe even two further. Does not mean it will meet VRA review; nothing less than a Hispanic district in Dallas (plus making a Hispanic district to "replace" Farenthold's) will do for that.

[Verily]

Damn.

GRIT has drawn what they claim to be a 29-7 map. No new district in Dallas, Gonzales and Doggett are merged. Bexar county is shattered.

http://gritnewsletter.org/?p=72

No surprise that it is possible. It is probably possible to go one further, maybe even two further. Does not mean it will meet VRA review; nothing less than a Hispanic district in Dallas (plus making a Hispanic district to "replace" Farenthold's) will do for that.

That map claims to have 19 majority minority seats. Probably more than the Democratic plans. I wonder what the demographic distributions are.

I doubt its wise, as a Democratic vote dump in DFW is very smart, but its quite interesting. As drawn there TX-30 probably becomes a majority Hispanic district.

Although, the Maldef plans also slice and dice Bexar, so I doubt they care about that.

Minority-majority =/= VRA compliant. It must typically elect the preferred candidate of the protected minority group to comply. In theory, you could draw every single Texas district to be minority-majority; that map would certainly not meet VRA requirements.

In fact, beyond a certain point (around 12 minority seats) the more minority-majority districts they create, the less likely the map is to be VRA-compliant as the individual minority groups become more and more limited in their ability to elect their preferred candidates in each individual district.

[Verily]

(plus making a Hispanic district to "replace" Farenthold's) will do for that.

Why?  Its not like they can't draw the 27th in a way that is still overwhelmingly Hispanic (like 67% VAP) that also voted for McCain.  You have to trade out Brownsville for the Harlingen area (which is way more Republican and only a little less Hispanic), and add in some of the Hispanic Republican counties more inland, but you can probably draw Farenthold a strong R District that's still easily VRA compliant.

Because you need to have a district that routinely elects the Hispanic voters' preferred candidate. That may be a Republican, but it seems at least unlikely. It's pretty easy to draw one district containing the Hispanic parts of Corpus Christi then stretching down to all of Cameron County, then draw another district for Farenthold that contains the white parts of Corpus and Republican areas to the north.

[Verily]

Gene Green specifically is not protected, but the preferred Hispanic candidate is. Any 52% McCain district would fail the VRA because it would not typically elect the preferred candidate of the Hispanic voters, which makes it an illegal dilution of Hispanic voting power--regardless of how heavily Hispanic the seat is. (Assuming, of course, that the preferred Hispanic candidate is a Democrat, which they usually are. It is possible, though, to draw 55% Hispanic seats in South Florida that would elect only Democrats. That would likely also be illegal.)

[Verily]

They don't have to always vote for the preferred Hispanic candidate. Just often enough that the Hispanic voting influence is not clearly being diluted. (And what they did with Farenthold reflects that; he got a safe seat, and they created a new Hispanic seat to replace the Farenthold seat.)

TX-23 is similar; it can elect Republicans sometimes, it just has to generally reflect Hispanic voter will. Which the old probably does, but the new one probably does not and may get thrown out. (It would be easy enough to up the Democratic percentage anyway--Corpus has a bunch of Hispanics who could be taken, for example, and the new TX-28 and TX-15 are packed more than they need to be.)

And, yes, the map does have to be 24-12. Or, at least, it has to be at least 24-10-2 or so.

[Verily]

They don't have to always vote for the preferred Hispanic candidate. Just often enough that the Hispanic voting influence is not clearly being diluted. (And what they did with Farenthold reflects that; he got a safe seat, and they created a new Hispanic seat to replace the Farenthold seat.)

TX-23 is similar; it can elect Republicans sometimes, it just has to generally reflect Hispanic voter will. Which the old probably does, but the new one probably does not and may get thrown out. (It would be easy enough to up the Democratic percentage anyway--Corpus has a bunch of Hispanics who could be taken, for example, and the new TX-28 and TX-15 are packed more than they need to be.)

And, yes, the map does have to be 24-12. Or, at least, it has to be at least 24-10-2 or so.

Even the current Court map has no real possibility of a 12th dem district without Chet Edwards. They're capped at 11.

They were capped at 11 on the 2000 Census numbers, but there are four new districts. There's no way that DFW map gets past the courts, and that would be the new Hispanic/Democratic seat.

[Verily]

That's the beauty of the VRA. What it actually does is ban racial gerrymandering, ie the kind of calculations you (and politicians) are currently engaging in.

I love irony.

Anyway, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth are capable of creating black-majority districts whose contortions are no worse (and in many instances look much better) than elsewhere, and the voting patterns of the urban hispanics in both places make a 58+ standard overkill (its the rural and suburban hispanics north of Corpus Cristie that lack pronounced partisan tendencies, which would seem to neccessitate an even higher bar than 58 to screw over non-hispanics in those districts, if the fluid parameters you outlined were to be objectively applied).    

Also, wasn't part of the challenge to the Texas plan the fact that the (compact) black-plurality district in Dallas-Fort Worth prevents the creation of a hispanic VRA district in the area (I'm still confused on that issue)?

First off, the difference between rural Hispanics and urban Hispanics is not partisanship (this should be obvious, just look at the voting patterns of somewhere like Zavala County). The difference is registration and turnout as well as the partisan/racial voting patterns of non-Hispanics. Hispanics in urban areas are much more likely to be registered voters, and they're much more likely to vote, than Hispanics in rural areas.

Additionally, Hispanics in urban areas tend to live in places where the non-Hispanic voters are more amenable to voting for Hispanic-preferred candidates (inevitably Democrats). A 50% Hispanic, 50% Anglo voting tract in Houston probably voted narrowly for Obama, or at least was marginal. A 50% Hispanic, 50% Anglo voting tract in rural Texas probably voted around 60% for McCain, in some places well over 60% for McCain. The difference is not mostly in the Hispanic voters, though (even assuming identical registration and turnout rates); it's mostly among the Anglo voters, who were moderately Republican in the Houston tract but overwhelmingly Republican in the rural tract. Additionally, urban voting tracts are more likely to have non-negligible non-Hispanic, non-Anglo populations (blacks and Asians, essentially nonexistent in rural Texas [except East Texas, but there are few Hispanics there]) that also are amenable to voting for Hispanic-preferred candidates.

There are still a few areas where the Hispanic percentage and the Democratic percentage don't line up, even accounting for registration, turnout and non-Hispanic votes. These are all in the panhandle area. They're basically explained the same way "Native American" areas in Oklahoma voting Republican are explained. It's a bunch of people of tenuously Hispanic ancestry who've lived in the area for centuries who really are not appropriately grouped with the residents of the Rio Grande Valley or the urban barrios.