US House Redistricting: Texas

[jimrtex]

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.

I suspect the Texas GOP's interest in playing with Doggett will be directly inverse to the number of Hispanic districts they're forced to draw. 

Nevertheless, never, ever underestimate what Texas lawmakers will attempt to get away with in redistricting.  The plan for subdividing Austin into a million pieces is probably out there.

Maldef or Lulac had proposed an Austin-San Antonio district as their remedy back in 2006.  That could pull some Democrats out of Bexar, making Canseco safer.  So Doggett's district becomes a Hispanic-opportunity district.  Create a district in Cameron-Hidalgo, which means Farenthold's district becomes pure Coastal Bend.  And move the Big Bend into Cuellar's district.

[jimrtex]

Remember the last hispanic-opportunity district for Doggett?

Approved by the DOJ and a federal court that had been picked by the Democrats.

[jimrtex]

As for Houston, I can definitely see the option of packing the blacks and creating another Hispanic opportunity seat that might, in fact, be pretty marginal.  That may well be done.

In Dallas, creating the Hispanic opportunity seat is probably the best idea.  Otherwise, you start knocking your McCain margins down to below 55% in more than one of those Dallas seats.

I'm being nice and creating a 25-11 map (presently 23-9) with a chance for the party switcher to make it 26-10.  Don't underestimate the GOP trying for 26-10 or even 27-9, though.  It can be done, but it's just more challenging and risks court challenges, of course.

Based on the 2009 ACS, the states population is divided like this based on share of 36 districts.

CD 10, 17, and 23 were split between two regions.

CD 10: 50% Houston (Austin County east), 50% Central
CD 17: 64% Central (McLennan south), 36% DFW
CD 23: 62% Central (Bexar), 38% South

Houston 9.63 (Currently 8.50, including 50% of CD 10)
DFW 11.84 (Currently 10.36, including 36% of CD 17 plus CD 1)
Central 6.77 (Currently 5.76, including 64% of CD 17, 50% of CD 10, and 62% of CD 23)
West 2.95 (Currently 3)
South 4.82 (Currently 4.38, including 38% of CD 23)

We don't have to do much in West Texas other than unkinking the boundaries and picking up 35,000 people somewhere.

In South Texas, the population isn't really in the right place to promote the non-Bexar part of CD 23 to its own district, so instead that area is added to CD 28.  We then create a new district from the northern parts of CD 15, CD 27, and CD 28.  We designate this district as CD 27, which is a Coastal Bend district and should probably also inlcude Victoria and surrounding areas, so we shift about 0.18 of a district from the Houston area.  The southern part of CD 27 is designated CD 33, and includes portions of Hidalgo County, CD 15 is shifted westward along the Rio Grande (CD 28 can give up its portion of Hidalgo, because it has gained Eagle Pass, Del Rio, and the Trans Pecos from CD 23)

So that makes it 23:10, with a competitive Coastal Bend CD 27.

In the Houston area, the excess of 0.45 (after the shift of Victoria to the Southern area) is about equivalent to its 1/2 of CD 10.  But instead of continuing this as an inner metro-district, we get population from Montgomery and Fort Bend, and perhaps the rural western parts of CD 14.  This 1/2 district will be added to CD 17 - see below.  CD 10 gets converted into a new district 34 with its core in NW Harris County.

Elsewhere, Jefferson gets shifted to CD 8, in exchange for some areas in Montgomery.  CD 2 also picks up some excess from CD 9, 18, and 29, which collectively have only 88K extra to give up.   CD 29 is short -13K, so we add the most Hispanic areas of CD 9 and 18 that are adjacent to CD 29.  The area that gets shifted to CD 2 is in the IAH area, which will make it look less like CD 18 is wrapping around CD 29 in north Houston.  Elsewhere we shift population towards the west to help create CD 34 and provide new population for CD 17.

That makes it 24:10

In the DFW area, CD 35 is created in the northern suburbs.  There is sufficient excess population in CD 3, 4, 12, and 26 for this. 

The northern part of CD 17 becomes CD 36 and adds in parts of CD 6, 24, 30, 5, and 1 (actually, much of it comes from CD 6, with areas in the other districts moving into CD 6.   We also need to add a little bit to the DFW area, so we pick off the northern tip of CD 31, and perhaps additional parts of CD 17 such as Madison, Robertson, and Limestone.  CD 36 might take over the southern tail of CD 6.   CD 6 could pick up Grand Prairie, etc.  CD 32 is short a bit, which it picks up from CD 30.

That makes is 36:10 with CD 32 becoming more competitive.

In Central Texas, you have to bulk up the remaining parts of CD 10 and CD 23.   CD 23 gets its population mainly from CD 21 and the small excess from CD 20.  CD 21 becomes very much a San Antonio-Austin district.  San Antonio really doesn't have enough population for 3 districts.   CD 25 withdraws behind the Armadillo Curtain.   CD 31 takes McLennan county from CD 17, and gives up parts of Williamson County to CD 10 (so CD 31 would become Georgetown, Killeen, Temple, Waco), while CD 10 is more Austin-Round Rock.

The southern part of CD 17 around Bryan-College Station gets the parts of CD 10 and 25 to the east of Austin, in exchange for giving up McLennan, and then adds in portions of the extreme northern and western parts of the Houston area.  It in effect becomes the inter-regional district, bur rather than going from Harris to Travis, it is centered on Bryan-College Station and edges into the suburban areas.

So you have CD 26:10 with CD 23, 27, and 32 being competitive seats.

CD 4 and CD 8 become a bit more pure East Texas, CD 4 is +130K because of growth in Collins and Rockwall which it shed.  I suppose it keeps Rockwall for now.  CD 2 8 picks up Jefferson which has lost enough population that it can be outvoted by areas to the north, and it will still include parts of Montgomery.

CD 31 now becomes a Waco-Temple-Killeen district stretching into the northern part of Austin.  You have a district based in Bryan-College Station, and Corpus Christi-Waco.  You have 4 border districts which will no longer be represented from San Antonio or Corpus Christi.  In the west, you have a better separation into: Amarillo-Wichita Falls, Lubbock-Abilene, and Midland-Odessa-San Angelo-Hill Country districts.

[jimrtex]

Yes, having now just looked at the question (because I was in a state of total confusion myself), apparently Justice Kennedy was vague in Bartlett v Strickland (did he mean to be vague, or was he just sloppy?), about whether the relevant minority class under the VRA was VAP or citizen VAP. His language just says VAP, but a later lower court opined in REYES v. CITY OF FARMERS BRANCH TEXAS that  given the context of the relevant phrase in Bartlett, and the fact that the issue of VAP versus citizen VAP was not before the Bartlett court, and  that the whole concept of voting means eligible to vote,  what Justice Kennedy really meant to say was citizen VAP, and not just VAP, and so ruled.

And since that lower court was the 5th Circuit, that holding is the governing authority for the moment for Texas, unless and until Justice Kennedy in a later case rules that no, when he wrote VAP, and did not include the qualifier "citizen," that was because he intended not to. It is all very odd, since the lower court in Bartlett which was appealed to SCOTUS, explicitly discussed the issue of citizen versus non-citizen, and explicitly ruled that the relevant number was citizen VAP, and one cannot not include the non citizen minority VAP in the count.

Fun stuff isn't it?

Especially since the 7th Circuit wasn't willing to use a standard like CVAP in Gonzalez v. City of Aurora (2008). They want to compare the approved map to a race neutral map to test for vote dilution. Clearly the two circuits differ in approach and it sets up an inevitable SCOTUS review after the 2011 redistricting IMHO. Many legal experts I've spoke to in the last year agree that the subject of VAP vs CVAP will need clarification by the high court.

Shouldn't the high court address the issue of inter-district variation in CVAP?  Doesn't the deliberate packing of citizens of voting age in some districts result in their having less of a vote than citizens of voting age in other districts, and violate the 14th Amendment?

[jimrtex]

The Court considered CVAP only as a proxy for determining the likelihood of a certain outcome, not for an individual's right to representation, which is based on being a resident of the state and not a citizen.

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[jimrtex]

I would just say the opposite, actually. Part of the point of Delaymandering was to target Cuellar, who wasn't a member of the House yet.

Cuellar almost knocked off Henry Bonilla, so they wanted to knock down the Hispanic % there and remove Laredo from the 23rd. Targeting Doggett was indirect and mostly a side effect because they needed to make a replacement district.

Actually the goal was to provide a district which Cuellar could win.  Remember that Cuellar had been appointed SOS by Rick Perry (just after Bush had resigned, so it may have even been Bush's decision).

The 2002 election was just an attempt by Laredoans to take back the district that had been taken from them when Albert Bustamante had beaten Chick Kazen in the 1984 primary.

Historical Texas Congressional Districts

Texas Congressional Map 1934-1956

Texas gained 3 seats after the 1930 census.  CD 15 is the border district.  Prior to redistricting it had also included the Brush Country.  This was also the first redistricting when Harris, Dallas, and Bexar had their own CD.  CD 8 (Harris County) was only 29% over.

It was after the 1930 Census that Bexar, Dallas, and Harris counties were each entitled to 7 state representatives, and the Texas Constitution was changed to require 100,000 persons for each additional representative.  At the time, each representative represented 38,831 persons.

By 1940, CD 8 was 173% of the statewide average, and by 1950 CD 8 was 219% of the statewide average.  Texas had gained a 22nd representative in 1952, but he was elected at large.

Texas Congressional Map 1958-1964

In 1958, the legislature got around to splitting Harris County, which by then had over a million persons.  After the 1960 Census, Texas gained another representative who was elected at large.  Dallas County, CD 5, with 951,000 persons was the most populous district in the country at the time of Wesberry v Sanders (see Appendix to Harlan dissent), 4.40 times the population of the least populous district in Texas.

In 2000 legislative hearings on redistricting, Martin Frost's henchman Gerry Hebert cited this example as being a Texas tradition of protecting incumbents.  In 1960, Joe Pool had run from this district and lost, while garnering almost as many votes as Sam Rayburn and Wright Patman combined.  Unfortunately for Pool, he was running as a Democrat in the only Republican district in Texas, and only got 42% of the vote.  Hebert claimed that the legislature made Pool run at large in 1962, when Texas got another representative, but no redistricting.  In fact, the Democrats were denying representation to Republicans.

Texas Congressional Map 1966

Texas Congressional Map 1968-1970

Bush v Martin brought one man one vote to Texas.   Bush is George Bush who was Republican State chairman at the time.  In 1966, Bush was elected to Congress from CD 7 which had been moved into Harris County, which increased the Republican representation to 2 from zero.  The other was CD 18 in the panhandle.  The Dallas district had been lost in the 1964 landslide, and Joe Pool won election in CD 3.  After his death, a 3rd Republican was elected.

Notice in particular the 2nd map which implemented one man, one vote, and see what evil the VRA has inflicted since.

There were now 3 CD's wholly within Harris County, 2 within Dallas, and 1 each in Tarrant and Bexar counties.

CD 15 moved to the lower valley, and CD 23 was created south of San Antonio.  In its initial configuration, only 15% of the district was in Bexar County, and about 15% in Webb County.  Chick Kazen of Laredo was elected in this district.

Texas Congressional Map 1972

Texas Congressional Map 1974

Texas Congressional Map 1976-1980

The 1972 redistricting pushed CD 23 northward due to slow rural growth.  It appears that the court ordered changes had to do with more rigorous enforcement of equal population, with some really ugly splits (see boundary between 11 and 17 where 3 counties ended up being chopped.

The 24th district was created in Tarrant and Dallas counties, and CD 18 was moved from the Panhandle to Harris County, where Barbara Jordan was elected.

CD 15 was now 35% in Bexar County, and about 16% in Webb County, and continued to be represented by Kazen.

Texas Congressional Map 1982

Texas Congressional Map 1984-1990

1980 brought 3 more districts to Texas.  CD 25 was created in Harris County, CD 26 in the Dallas suburbs, and CD 27 the coastal strip of South Texas.

Since South Texas really didn't have the population for a 3rd district, this shifted CD 15 to the west and north, much more into Bexar County.  In the 1984 configuration, Bexar County went to 45% of the district, with Webb now 19%, and loss of much of the district south of San Antonio,   In 1984, Albert Bustamante of San Antonio beat Kazen in the Democratic primary.

Texas Congressional Map 1992-1996(primary)

Texas Congressional Map 1996(general)-2000

This was the Frostrosity redistricting.  Egged on by Governor Ann Richards who likened redistricting to hog butchering, and compared a federal court judge to a baby in a high chair, three new districts were hacked out, CD 28 in "South Texas", CD 29 in Harris County, and CD 30 in Dallas County.  Notice all the splits of Midland, Odessa, San Angelo, Lubbock, Amarillo, Tyler, and Nacogdoches.  Besides creating 3 Democratic seats, the Democrats tried to maintain control of other districts, and would eventually lose 5, 9, 12, 13, 14, and 23.

CD 28 of course is a thinly disguised San Antonio district.  Since so much of its population is from Bexar County, it forced a radical shift of CD 23 to the west.  Albert Bustamante also wanted his new mansion in northwest San Antonio to be in his district.  Bexar County was only 27% of the district, and Webb had grown to 24%.  Henry Bonilla beat Bustamante in 1992, in party by running ads showing Bustamante's kited checks from the House Banking Scandal and pictures of his new mansion.

Bush v Vera in 1996 resulted in redrawing the districts in the Dallas and Houston areas, and meant that elections in 13 districts were run as special elections, with the primary results discarded.  This had no impact on South Texas.

Texas Congressional Map 2002

The federal district court drew the map in 2002 cleaning up lines to some extend but see CD 4 and CD 5 for example.  The two new districts were CD 31 running from Houston to Round Rock, and CD 32 in Dallas.

CD 23 had only minor adjustments, but now Webb County had 30% of the district, while Bexar was down down to 26%.  When Henry Cuellar challenged Henry Bonilla it was a geographically polarized election more than racially polarized.  But because some of the border counties are so heavily Hispanic you can convince some judges that it was racially polarized.

Texas Congressional Map 2004-2006 primary

After the 2001 district court decision invited the legislature to perform its redistricting duties, this map was drawn in 2003.  This map clearly demonstrates that you can't draw 6 border districts.  Henry Cuellar defeated Ciro Rodriguez in the 2004 primary, which simply was another illustration of geographical polarization.

Just for fun, compare CD 27 between the 2002 and 2004 maps.

Texas Congressional Map 2006 general-2010

These are the districts drawn in 2006.  With Webb placed entirely in CD 28, Bexar County is now 56% of CD 23.  Had it been an ordinary election, Henry Bonilla would have defeated Ciro Gonzalez in 2006, and Quico Canseco did in 2010.

The Supreme Court in 2006 ruled that CD 25 did not count for VRA purposes.  But are CD 15 and CD 28 really any better?  They bypass nearby communities to include far distant population

CD 28: 340 miles (McAllen, Laredo, Floresville, Seguin)
CD 15: 220 miles (McAllen, Alice, Cuero)

CD 23 perhaps could be defended as being "compact" on the basis of having to stick the Trans-Pecos somewhere.  But San Antonio-Del Rio-El Paso is 580 miles and doesn't even include the direct highway route between El Paso and San Antonio, adding another 1-1/2 to a trip that is already 7-1/2 hours.

The first prong of the Gingles Test is that a geographically compact minority can form a majority in a single-member district.  But doesn't that imply that the single-member district should also be compact?

[jimrtex]

In any case, here's the first redistricting bill. It's set up around 32 districts rather than 36, if someone wants to poke through it.

http://www.connectamarillo.com/news/story.aspx?id=562653

It's probably easier to get to from the Texas legislature website.

It is essentially a shell bill.  The Texas Constitution has lots of restrictions on the process of legislation.  In particular, the first month or so of the session is restricted to committee consideration of bills.   So filing a bill permits it to be assigned to a redistricting committee, so that hearings can be held.  You may notice that the bills give the Plan number on the Redviewer site.

I wouldn't be surprised if the congressional and SBOE plans weren't also filed in the House as well.  Traditionally, the two houses redistrict themselves.  The bills then go to the opposite house, where it arranged that they are voted on at the same time.  Doormen are stationed at opposite end of the capital so that they can verify that the two bills are simultaneously gaveled as being approved.

[jimrtex]

Yes, having now just looked at the question (because I was in a state of total confusion myself), apparently Justice Kennedy was vague in Bartlett v Strickland (did he mean to be vague, or was he just sloppy?), about whether the relevant minority class under the VRA was VAP or citizen VAP. His language just says VAP, but a later lower court opined in REYES v. CITY OF FARMERS BRANCH TEXAS that  given the context of the relevant phrase in Bartlett, and the fact that the issue of VAP versus citizen VAP was not before the Bartlett court, and  that the whole concept of voting means eligible to vote,  what Justice Kennedy really meant to say was citizen VAP, and not just VAP, and so ruled.

And since that lower court was the 5th Circuit, that holding is the governing authority for the moment for Texas, unless and until Justice Kennedy in a later case rules that no, when he wrote VAP, and did not include the qualifier "citizen," that was because he intended not to. It is all very odd, since the lower court in Bartlett which was appealed to SCOTUS, explicitly discussed the issue of citizen versus non-citizen, and explicitly ruled that the relevant number was citizen VAP, and one cannot not include the non citizen minority VAP in the count.

Fun stuff isn't it?

Lepak v City of Irving, currently pending in federal district court (Northern District, Texas), challenges the notion of whether a city may "voluntarily" draw districts such that the influence of voters in some districts is diluted, even though the districts have the same number of persons, especially when equal population districts can be drawn that do have relatively equal numbers of voters.

[jimrtex]

Also, I saw an earlier comment on precincts after new numbers come out - Texas counties almost never redraw their precincts, rather they split current precincts up (when they become too big, I guess).  I should know why but I don't.

Changes in election precincts and polling places are a change in voting procedure which must be precleared under Section 5 of the VRA.  That means you have to hire very expensive lawyers to justify the change.

Texas election law requires that election precincts not cross, congressional district, legislative district, SBOE district, commissioner precinct, justice of the peace precinct boundaries, and council districts in large cities.

The rule about commissioner precincts is why every county in Texas, even Loving, has at least 4 election precincts.  After the 1990s redistricting, the number of precincts in Harris County roughly doubled, because the congressional and the two legislative redistricting were done independently using the census geography which only shows number of people and race, and not whether a boundary makes sense.  There were precincts with 5 voters because where one district line zigged another zagged.  The Comical would do interviews with election judges in their carport which served as the polling place, and they would say that they had voted when the polls opened, and their neighbor Joe would come over after work, and the other voter had moved.

Since the 1990s redistricting was based on race, it is likely that any area on one side of a line had a different racial makeup than those on the other side.  So if you had a nice rectangular precinct on one side of the road, and another on the other side that was split based on race, you won't want to explain to the USDOJ why you took this nice rectangular precinct on one side of the road and merged it with this odd shaped finger that happened to be 70% minority.  You would simply split the other precinct to conform to the legislatively mandated district lines.

One reasons that the the 1990s lines were so irregular was that the lines had been drawn to pick up apartment complexes for inclusion in the Ben Reyes or Craig Washington districts, and to separate them from the single family homes in the Bill Archer district.  Because Houston doesn't have zoning, there can be apartments in the the middle of single-family residential, and these were connected in an attempt to include the fewest houses.

After the most egregious districts (congressional and senate) were overturned, there was the possibility of merging some precincts back together, and that was done in some cases.  The number of precincts in Harris County is much less than the peak.  It went from around 666 to 1300, and now is somewhere around 850.  The reason that Harris County precinct numbers don't make any sense is that when precincts are merged, the highest number is retired.  And then when they need a new one, they will just take the lowest available.

During the 2000s redistricting, an effort was made to follow existing election precinct boundaries.  While this tended not to make matters worse, it didn't necessarily improve things, because some precinct boundaries are fossilized remains of the 1990s racial divisions.

Currently, elections precincts are limited to a maximum of 5000 voters.  In the past, this maximum this number based on the size of the county.  Montgomery County had to redo most their election precincts when their population reached a certain threshold.  This maximum may not be effectively as large as it used to be, because of it become harder to purge registration lists.

[jimrtex]

What would the UIL do?

In apologies for my Demmymander, here's "Civic Exercise" Texas, ie something similar to what a redistricting commission might draw if it existed (and given the recent Florida and California initiatives, who knows what the future has in store on that front?) Except they'd do a much better job at dividing Houston Blacks from Houston Hispanics, and maybe the Lubbock-Amarillo thing (why is that "never going to happen in real life", Sam?) Oh, and they'd baulk at the donut I drew around San Antonio, but it was the most reasonable thing to do with the territory I had left.

When it was first possible to draw a Lubbock - Amarillo it would have been very tightly drawn, perhaps going down the New Mexico border to avoid Plainview, but leaving out Dalhart, or it could go further east, to cut down the population, but it would ended up being a donut.  Even now, while the Lubbock-Amarillo district looks neat, you have a huge area which you disguised by cutting off the map.

CD3 (purple) North Tarrant to Denison
81 - 10
66-33 McCain (Denton town is ridiculously liberal btw, wtf is up with that?)
Open, right?

University of North Texas, Texas Womens University.  Also Denton is far enough north that it really isn't a suburban.   Because the Denton-Collin border is east of the Tarrant-Dallas border, the suburban growth is in the SE corner, and then you hit a lake so it isn't solid growth to Denton.  Suburban growth from Fort Worth is just barely lapping into Denton County.

CD10 (pink) Fort Worth
48 - 28 - 20
56-43 Obama
Granger (?)

CD11 (light green) suburbs and exurbs southeast, south and west of Fort Worth
81 - 10 - 5
67-32 McCain
Open (unless Granger's home is here after all. She'd probably run here, anyways.)

Granger was mayor of Fort Worth.

CD17 (slate) Beaumont/Port Arthur, Galveston/Texas City, Baytown
62 - 14 - 22
58-41 McCain
Open

The state highway between Galveston and Port Arthur was wiped out several decades ago and not replaced.  Your district looks OK simply because lower Galverton Bay is in Galveston County, and upper Galveston Bay is in Chambers.

[jimrtex]

For some reason, it told me that it was contiguous, but I changed it in later versions when I saw it wasn't.  It's not a big deal - you can change things around Harlingen an the numbers are not particularly different.

In the federal district court trial on the 2003 district boundaries, the issue of the district boundaries in the Harlingen area were raised.  The plaintiffs claimed that these really weird boundaries (between 27 and 15) were drawn to cut out 15 Hispanic voters.  The State responded that they had simply followed the city limits, including fence lines of Harlingen.  For that reason, Torie's boundaries might be suspect since they ignored conventional redistricting practice of respecting city boundaries, especially if it appeared that the intent was done to deny Hispanics an equal opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice.

[jimrtex]

[What are exactly the "fence lines of Harlingen"?  The numbers don't make that big of a difference here in my book, so changes could be made to "respect that".

Go to  http://www.tlc.state.tx.us/redist/redist.htm  And bring up District Viewer (the cursor target is off a bit, so point slightly above).

Select the congressional plan and select on cities, then turn off the congressional map checkbox.  Zoom in on Harlingen (sorry, no box zoom).  And if you notice carefully you see a long yellow spear almost reaching the river.  Turn the congressional map back on.

Texas has (had) pretty liberal annexation laws, where a city can basically say to an area, "you're now in the city".  You might remember when Houston under Bob Lanier annexed Kingwood.  And when NASA was being built at Clear Lake, there were like 13 cities trying to annex it.

So to try to provide some structure, cities were granted Extra Territorial Jurisdiction (ETJ) outside their city limits.  The distance outside your city limits that an ETJ extends, depends on the population of the city.  For Houston, it extends 5 miles.  Another city can not annex within an ETJ of another city, and new city may not be formed within the ETJ (without permission).

Cities used to be able to annex very narrow strips of land, less than 100 feet wide.  You could annex a long strip, and extend your ETJ, and then repeat.  Houston has some areas like that which extend almost to Waller and Tomball, and there is another that goes into the far NW corner of Harris County.  Those that reach out to Waller and Tomball have arms that spread out as if trying to surround those areas.  Those are fence lines, which are being used to fence out other cities.

Strip annexations like that are now illegal, but cities can still keep the existing ones, and annex off them.  Cities are now also required to provide services to an area when they annex it, within a few years.  So most cities only annex retail, offices, and industrial areas, since they bring in more revenue than they cost in services.  Residential areas are expensive - except in cases like Kingwood which already had city-level streets and utilities.  Something like 97% of retail establishments in Harris County are inside city limits, so that the cities can collect the sales taxes.

Back to Harlingen.  The boundary between CD 15 and 27 used to be on the Hidalgo-Cameron County line.  But let's say you want to draw a district between say McAllen and ummmm. how about Austin?  So you need a little bit more of Hidalgo County, and CD 15 needs some more population.  So you shift Harlingen into CD 15 and add some more of San Patricio to CD 27.

And just to keep Justice Kennedy and his never-ending quest for the judiciable political gerrymander standard, you respect the city limits of Harlingen.  When the district court had its trial, the plaintiffs tried to show that the irregularity in district boundaries was racially based, and the State could show that they were following city boundaries.

[jimrtex]

Pikers.  Alvin is the "A" in the upper center of the map.  It has two little arms extending along Texas 6 to the east and west, and legs along Texas 35 to the south.

Its fence line (1) extends almost the full length of the Brazoria-Galveston county line, (2) almost to the Gulf of Mexico, it then (3,4) comes back north through Brazoria county to keep the Lake Jackson cities out, and then heads west to (5) where it reaches the Brazos River and Fort Bend County.  It then follows the county line, north, east, and NNE, to (6) where it meets the Pearland fence line and heads east.  It is snipped off by Iowa Colony, but starts up again until it meets the Manvel fence line and heads south, end where it meets Iowa Colony again.

I'm guessing that this fence line is about 80 miles in length.

(7) Alvin has another fence line to its north that extends along the Brazoria-Galveston line west of Friendswood, heads west along the Pearland fence line, and then turns south along the Manvel fence line.

[jimrtex]

Sam, have you been following the fight between Perry and Doggett over education funding? Do you think Perry might push the legislature to cut up his seat after this?

Not really.

Perry might do it.  It can be done - you either make it into a Hispanic-majority seat, he may still win anyway, or you draw him out of the district, but I don't know where exactly he lives in Austin.  The Hispanic-majority seat not pretty, but it can be done.  The only issue is that it makes creating Hispanic-majority seats where GOPers can win a bit more difficult in other parts of the state.

He can move.  After the 2003 redistricting he rented an apartment in south Austin.  During the court trial, one of the remedy plans said that he didn't live in the new district, but it didn't matter since he didn't live in his old one either, and then one of the briefs noted that he did live in the district.

[jimrtex]

Cd-9 and CD-18 are also not contiguous and I don't know how they could be.

I haven't started posting any maps yet because I have to get the partisan figures for the big counties into an excel file in order to properly gerrymander (like Torie does). 

It's designed to be touch pointed.

Fair enough.

I think you could have one district use the Pierce Elevated while the other uses Main Street, or you use the tunnels.

[jimrtex]

Wait, what is this "touch-pointed"? That doesn't make sense. Mathematically, you shouldn't be able to skip over the center point like that - if you could, then any noncontiguous district with two parts at opposite ends of a state could be made "contiguous" by an infinitely narrow point-wide connection with a Dedekind cut on either side.

I think you are going to get different interpretation of whether this is legal in different states,  Just because it happened in North Carolina doesn't mean that it will work in Texas.

If you wanted to maintain literal contiguity you can start out with 36 concentric districts that are a millimeter thick around the outside perimeter of the state.   Pick out a set of discontiguous areas that are to comprise the outermost district.  Connect these with narrow channels 72 millimeters wide that run down the center of roads etc  Run the bundles of districts down the left side if the channel.  When you get to one of the areas that have people that will be in the district, run the bundle around the outside, and then come back down the right side the channel.  Repeat the same for each other district.

[jimrtex]

slightly off topic, but didn't Gene Green draw himself into power? I believe he was a state senator in the early 90s, and drew a convoluted district for himself meandering through eastern Harris County in search of democratic precincts. I believe Eddie Bernice Johnson did the same thing. You can see a map of the district here:
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/jackbrooks

He picked a lot of the precincts, picking up more in north Houston which were White transitioning to Hispanic, vs those in east Houston.  It also extended west to Spring Branch to include apartment complexes with Hispanic census counts, but who weren't so likely to be voting.  A lot of all the fingers were due to Houston not having zoning, so they had to search out for multi-family housing.  Because it went so far west, TX-18 had to wrap around the district to get from the 3rd Ward to Acres Homes and Houston Heights and then to the 5th Ward and Kashmere Gardens and Clinton Park and Pleasantville in the northeast.   TX-18 needed to include all the northern black areas, since the Democrats were trying to protect TX-25.  You will notice that TX-25 also wraps TX-29 to include areas north of the ship channel which you might have been put in a Hispanic district.  So unlike IL-4 which actually pretends to be picking up Hispanic voters in the loop to the west, the loop in TX-18 was trying to avoid voters.

The first primary in TX-29 was between Gene Green and Ben Reyes, which was extremely close and ended up in court because of cross-over voting between the primary and runoff.  In Texas, there is not a secret ballot if you vote illegally, so you can be called to testify if you have voted in primaries of two parties.  One old man said something to the effect, I'm 75 years old, I've had a good life, and done all the things I've wanted to do, so you might as well come and put the cuffs on, because I'm not going to tell you who I voted for.

Eventually, a new election was called.  And it was also discovered that the primary had not been run on the correct boundaries, with a few precincts excluded, and others erroneously excluded.  I have a fantasy that it was a Taiwanese graduate student trying to analyze the election results, and discovered they didn't actually match the census block-defined boundaries; or that both the Reyes and Green camps knew of this, and were holding off in case of an adverse court ruling.

Eddie Bernice Johnson testified that she had included her friends in uhh,,, her district.  This may have been so that she could grant scholarships to her friends children, so it was not as corrupt as it would appear.

[jimrtex]

a lot of those white transitioning to Hispanic precincts north of Houston used to be in Jack Field's district I believe. Pretty much all the democratic precincts were excised out of the district and added areas like Montgomery County and College Station to the district. He got a pretty good deal. His old district was a district where where Bush got in the low to mid 50s in 1988. The new district he was given was a 73% Bush district. The newly drawn 29th was a 58% Dukakis District.

North Houston, not north of Houston.  The area starting at North Main, between the East Tex and North Freeways.

[jimrtex]

and now for an amusing lawsuit...

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

It sounds similar to what happened in 1991.  After the legislature had passed its redistricting bills, they were challenged in a district court in Hidalgo County.  The State (Richards and Morales) conceded that the districts drawn by the legislature were illegal, and that a district court in McAllen should fashion a remedy.  It got moved into a federal court which ruled that the district court hadn't exercised due process, and drew its own plans.  Ann Richards then called a special session to redistrict again.  This was when she was comparing federal judges to infants in a high chair, and that redistricting was like hog butchering.  Most of the legislators were kept out of the process, and Texas ended up with different senate district boundaries in 1990, 1992, 1994, 1996, and 1998.  In Harris County, all the Democratic House districts ended up with 5% less population than the Republican districts.

[jimrtex]

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.

Cameron and Hidalgo counties sued Donald Evans, the Secretary of Commerce (Census Bureau is part of Department of Commerce) to have statistically adjusted census figures released.  The district court dismissed all the juicy claims (equal protection, due process, regulatory procedure, and the Census Act), but did grant release of the figures under the Freedom of Information Act.

The case was appealed to the 5th Circuit but it appears that everything was eventually dismissed with the agreement of the litigants.

At issue then was the claim that the counties and cities would lose money from the US government that is distributed on a per capita basis.  I couldn't find anything whether any population counts or disbursements were actually adjusted.

The lawyer in the MALC case is the same lawyer as the 2000s cases.  I don't know why they don't sue Gary Locke, though since they are claiming that it was the Census Bureau decision to not use mail out.

[jimrtex]

There are some House of Representative plans submitted by outsiders on the Texas Legislative Council website (See Districtviewer)

MALDEF thinks it's OK to draw a district from McAllen to not quite Austin, especially if you draw another district from San Antonio to Austin that prevents the first district from actually touching Travis County.

[jimrtex]

i like the pates plan. It throws Marchant, Hensarling, and Poe under the bus and also returns the districts to their natural home (17th district is again based in Abilene, 1st is based in Texarkana, 25th in Houston, 11th in Waco-Temple Area)

It shows what political hacks the Democratic lawyers were in 2006 when they tried to disqualify Pate.  I sure hope the attorney fees weren't coming from personal funds of the Representative (other than Jackson Lee of course).

[jimrtex]

Doggett found a proposed Republican map.

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/politics/entries/2011/04/28/a_proposed_redistricting_map_w.html

The long and short of it:

1. Doggett's district turned into a Travis-Bexar district, presumably Hispanic VRA.
2. Hispanic 33rd in Metroplex.
3. Corpus-based 35th and points north for Farenthold or someone else, his old district reverting to VRA.
4. 2nd district moves all the way into Harris County, and what used to be the 2nd in East Texas is now the 36th.
5. 34th district looks bizarre, linking Parker County to the Hill Country across the remains of Edwards' pre-Delaymander district. Presumably picking up leftover territory after the 21st and 31st districts shrink and expand into Travis.

31 doesn't go into Travis County, in fact a bit of Williamson is included in 10. 

MALDEF is demanding a Austin-San Antonio district.  When state demographers were going over the population before the redistricting committee, the Hispanic members, who happen to be lawyers, were carefully eliciting "testimony" about Hispanic growth between the two cities.

34 can be improved.  Give it Kendall, Bandera, Llano, Mason, San Saba, Mills, Hamilton, and all of Hood, so it will look like a Hill Country district.  Move some more of Travis into 21, to make up for Kerr and Bandera, and move the western stack a little bit further east (Cooke, Wise, and Parker) to make up for the loss of the other counties.   Maybe pick up a slice of Williamson.

[jimrtex]

Also, that map splits Laredo in two. Why would anyone expect that to be more acceptable this decade than it was last time?

The two representatives who represented Webb County (Cuellar and Bonilla) submitted a brief requesting that the split be maintained.

[jimrtex]

Also, that map splits Laredo in two. Why would anyone expect that to be more acceptable this decade than it was last time?

The two representatives who represented Webb County (Cuellar and Bonilla) submitted a brief requesting that the split be maintained.

How was their brief received by the court?

The court said we received 14 different maps and we ignored them all.