State Legislative Elections

[jimrtex]

Looks like this in the Texas House and Senate:  Overall, a decent night for the Dems.

Senate:
R20 D11 (R+1, gained TXS-18*)

House:
R82, D68 (D+3, gained TXH-47*, TXH-107, TX-134)

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Cook had planned on quitting in 2004, and two other Democrats had already decided to run, along with 4 Republicans for what had appeared to be an open seat.  Cook filed at the last moment, easily winning the Democrat primary, then won by about 10%.  This time the GOP spent a lot more on the effort and almost won.

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Because Luna was unopposed when she withdrew, all parties were able to choose a new candidate.  The loser in the Democrat selection process, Danny Noyola, was upset because he felt that Ortiz Sr. had controlled the process (he was probably right).  There was also a special election for the remaining 2 months of Luna's term, in which Noyola ran along with the GOP candidate Joe McComb, with Ortiz 43.95%, McComb 43.47%, and Noyola 12.57%.  Conceivably, McComb could win the special election if Noyola backers turn out and vote for him.  As it was, it looks like they split about 50-50.

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South Texas, it is between San Antonio and Corpus Christi.  Not that close since there was also a Libertarian with 5% of the vote.

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He had a 74:24 lead in his home county (Crosby), where the house race had more votes cast than the governor's race, and the downballot statewides were around 65:35 GOP. 

[jimrtex]

Texas House

Texas is Big

[jimrtex]

TX-85 almost looks sort of like a swastika.

As you may know, the district was Pete Laney's.  In 2001, the legislature failed to redistrict, and under the Texas Constitution, legislative redistricting  is then done by the Legislative Redistricting Board (LRB), comprised of the Lt.Governor (Bill Ratliff), the House Speaker (Laney), Attorney General (now Sen. Cornyn), Comptroller (Rylander/Strayhorn), Land Commissioner (now Lt. Governor Dewhurst).

This was a 4-1 GOP majority, with Cornyn acting as chairman and Laney on the sidelines.

Under the Texas Constitution (as interpreted by court cases), counties with a population smaller than one representative may not be split.  In West Texas, there are a number of counties with population in the 80-94% range (Potter & Randall - Amarillo; Wichita - Wichita Falls; Taylor - Abilene; Tom Green - San Angelo; Midland - Midland; Ector - Odessa) which must be combined with a number small counties attached to these larger cores.  Lubbock County has a population slightly less than 2 districts, so it must have one whole district, and the remnant treated liked the other mid-sized counties (Texas House districts average about 139,000 in population).  After you use up the population for the 9 districts with a mid-sized core, then there is population enough for 4 rural districts, which are the districts in the eastern Panhandle; along the Red River wrapping around Wichita Falls; in the Hill Country; and Laney's.

As the LRB was considering the GOP proposal, an amendment was offered that would extend TX-85 further south.  Laney said something like, "this is getting a bit personal"; to which Cornyn responded, "Touché".

This may have led Laney to queer the congressional districts drawn by a Texas district court.  Since the legislature also failed to redistrict the congressional districts, this ended up in both state and federal courts.  The state court produced a most reasonable map based on ideas by Lt.Governor Ratliff.   The state district judge, then said I'm going to make a few minor changes at the request of Speaker Laney (he was a Democrat judge - because the Democrats had filed in his district, sooner than the Republicans had filed elsewhere).  The Texas Supreme Court threw out the revised state district court plan.  Since there was no valid state plan, the federal district court then started with the last legal plan the 1991/1996 Frostrocity and drew their map, which was replaced in 2003 by the Legislature.

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Texas Redistricting Site - Legislative Council
At the lower right corner is a link to their FTP site which has ESRI "shp" files for the various districts.

I use a program called Global Mapper which in free mode can do projections (shp files are typically in latitude-longitude decimal degrees) and has various options for rendering boundaries, and you can scale maps.  So it is sufficient for creating base maps.  I use a program called PixWizard to do a screen capture create .bmp files.  In this case, I did one capture for the state, and then set Global Mapper to a larger scale and panned to the various areas to create the maps for the largest counties.  I also did a screen capture to get the color scale.   I used Microsoft Paint to color the maps and merge the detailed maps, and PixWizard to convert to a .png format (which is much smaller).

Incidentally, the Census Bureau has lots of .shp files for all the census geography (except blocks).  They have legislative districts(at least some states), but they are as they existed in April 2000 at the time of the Census, before redistricting.

[jimrtex]

Texas Senate

In the first election after redistricting (eg 2002, all senate seats are contested).  When the senate meets, lots are drawn to determine which senators will serve a 2-year term (2003-2005) and which will serve a 4-year term (2003-2007).  The districts in the first class will then have elections in 2002, 2004, and 2008, for terms of 2, 4, and 4 years.  The districts in the second class will have elections in 2002, 2006, and 2010 for terms of 4, 4, and 2 years.

On the maps below, a green square indicates the seats that were "contested" in 2004.  The yellow square indicates the GOP pick-up (where the Democrat incumbent retired, and the Democrat nominee withdrew).

Very few seats had Democrat-Republican contests.  Over the two elections, there were 8 GOP unopposed; 5 GOP-Libertarian races; 5 Democrats unopposed; 1 Dem-Libertarian race; and 1 Dem-Libertarian-mistress race.

Of the remaining races, Republicans won 7 and Democrats 4.

Texas is Big

[jimrtex]

Most of those rural legislators are quite conservative Democrats, but if you want that, go right on ahead. 

Do they have Tory Democrats anywhere but Texas?

[jimrtex]

Here's the MS House of Represenatives.

It's pretty ridiculously gerrymandered

Take a look at Oktibbeha County, where 23, 35, 37, and 38 and wind in a spiral...if that's not an intentional attempt to block out the student vote of MSU, I don't know what is..

I suspect it it is build up the population count of the districts.  If you made a Starkville-based district, you would have to eliminate one of the other 4 districts which I'm guessing are two black and two white.

They ought to do like New Zealand does.  NZ electorates are based on population.  The NZ census records as well as the NZ voter registry records whether a person or voter is Maori or not.  In addition, a Maori voter may choose to be on the general roll or the Maori roll. 

When electorates are drawn, the population for an area is attributed to Maori seats based on the proportion of the Maori voters who requested to be on the Maori roll.

For example, let's say that an area had 1600 non-Maoris, and 400 Maoris, and 250 Maori voters, with 100 (40%) registering on the Maori roll.  Then 1600 + 400 x 0.60 = 1840 of the population is attributed to the general electoral population, and 400 x 0.40 or 160 of the population is attributed to the Maori electoral population.

The number of South Island general electorates is set at 16, and the quota is determined by dividing the South Island general electorate by 16.  The number of North Island general electorates and Maori electorates is then calculated from this quota.

The general electorates and Maori electorates both cover the entire country and are independent of each other.    One of the Maori electorates (7 total) covers all of South Island and Wellington on North Island.

So in Mississippi, voters could register on the White roll, Black roll, or the general roll.  Depending on how many signed up for each would determine the associated electoral population for each type of district.  The districts could be drawn without consideration of race.  In an area with small concentrations of blacks (in towns for example) you could simply draw a Black district covering the entire area, instead of a districting snaking between the areas to link them.