Maps we need to see!

[dpmapper]

I'm not sure I understand the objection.  Are you saying the map is too Republican, or not Republican enough? 

I confess I'm not well-versed in the VRA rulings and intricacies.  I was trying to draw a GOP friendly map assuming that the DOJ requires one more Hispanic majority district in the south (for a total of 7, including El Paso and San Antonio).  There's not really enough population to do that without taking in counties around Victoria, and if you keep the first three Rio Grande districts compact (eg, one Laredo-San Antonio, one McAllen, and one the rest of the valley plus the Hispanic areas of Corpus Christi), there aren't enough Hispanic areas to make the fourth one.  (I also don't understand how an El Paso - San Antonio district is OK according to the Supreme Court criteria.)  Of course, if the DOJ does *not* ask for another Hispanic district, that just makes it easier for the GOP to get to 26-10. 

Good point on the West Texas districts.  I can *almost* fit 3 more West Texas-based districts in there, without them bleeding too much into DFW, Austin or San Antonio.  I don't know exactly which counties wouldn't want to be joined to an Amarillo, Lubbock or Midland district, though - I do spill into the 21st and 31st a bit. 

BTW, with some editing of the San Antonio lines I got the 23rd back to 55% Hispanic, and the 28th back to 60%, without affecting the partisan splits. 

[jimrtex]

I'm not sure I understand the objection.  Are you saying the map is too Republican, or not Republican enough? 

I confess I'm not well-versed in the VRA rulings and intricacies.  I was trying to draw a GOP friendly map assuming that the DOJ requires one more Hispanic majority district in the south (for a total of 7, including El Paso and San Antonio).  There's not really enough population to do that without taking in counties around Victoria, and if you keep the first three Rio Grande districts compact (eg, one Laredo-San Antonio, one McAllen, and one the rest of the valley plus the Hispanic areas of Corpus Christi), there aren't enough Hispanic areas to make the fourth one.  (I also don't understand how an El Paso - San Antonio district is OK according to the Supreme Court criteria.)  Of course, if the DOJ does *not* ask for another Hispanic district, that just makes it easier for the GOP to get to 26-10. 

Good point on the West Texas districts.  I can *almost* fit 3 more West Texas-based districts in there, without them bleeding too much into DFW, Austin or San Antonio.  I don't know exactly which counties wouldn't want to be joined to an Amarillo, Lubbock or Midland district, though - I do spill into the 21st and 31st a bit. 

BTW, with some editing of the San Antonio lines I got the 23rd back to 55% Hispanic, and the 28th back to 60%, without affecting the partisan splits. 

It's impossible to draw 7 VRA districts in the south.  The Supreme Court ruled that you can't draw a map from McAllen to Austin and call it VRA district just because it a majority Hispanic district.  The pink and blue districts are ending up in the Houston and Austin metro areas,and you are splitting all kinds of counties, which suggests that race is the only criteria you are using.  You have made the teal district more Republican, after the court just got redrawing it.

[Verily]

VRA districts can't just be drawn to be majority X. They have to also guarantee that the preferred candidate of group X will be elected in all but freak elections. Since Hispanics (and blacks) are always strongly Democratic (except the Cubans in South Florida), this effectively means that VRA districts have to be Democratic-voting as well. A 54% McCain district will never meet VRA standards despite being majority Hispanic.

[tpfkaw]

VRA districts can't just be drawn to be majority X. They have to also guarantee that the preferred candidate of group X will be elected in all but freak elections. Since Hispanics (and blacks) are always strongly Democratic (except the Cubans in South Florida), this effectively means that VRA districts have to be Democratic-voting as well. A 54% McCain district will never meet VRA standards despite being majority Hispanic.

VRA is a hilariously awful law.

[dpmapper]

Which current districts are VRA districts?  23, 27, 28 are R+4, R+2, R+0 in PVI - does that mean they're not? 

[Verily]

Which current districts are VRA districts?  23, 27, 28 are R+4, R+2, R+0 in PVI - does that mean they're not?  

They all are. Their PVI is deceptive and somewhat irrelevant, since PVI only measures Presidential vote and includes Bush's overperformance in South Texas. They usually elect Democrats to Congress (two of them not this year, but that's unimportant--what matters is that they routinely elect the preferred minority-group candidate in most years; occasional hiccups like Cao in LA-02 are acceptable).

Also, TX-23 was drawn by the courts to minimally disrupt the rest of the map to undo part of the Perrymander that diluted Hispanic voting power too much. It is therefore probably the absolute most Republican any court would allow a VRA district to be, and on this year's results might be considered still a VRA violation by a court reanalyzing the issue.

[Dgov]

Which current districts are VRA districts?  23, 27, 28 are R+4, R+2, R+0 in PVI - does that mean they're not?  

They all are. Their PVI is deceptive and somewhat irrelevant, since PVI only measures Presidential vote and includes Bush's overperformance in South Texas. They usually elect Democrats to Congress (two of them not this year, but that's unimportant--what matters is that they routinely elect the preferred minority-group candidate in most years; occasional hiccups like Cao in LA-02 are acceptable).

Also, TX-23 was drawn by the courts to minimally disrupt the rest of the map to undo part of the Perrymander that diluted Hispanic voting power too much. It is therefore probably the absolute most Republican any court would allow a VRA district to be, and on this year's results might be considered still a VRA violation by a court reanalyzing the issue.

Wait, come to think of it TX-23 had a Republican representative between 1994 and 2006.  Doesn't that by definition make it a non-VRA District?

[Verily]

Which current districts are VRA districts?  23, 27, 28 are R+4, R+2, R+0 in PVI - does that mean they're not?  

They all are. Their PVI is deceptive and somewhat irrelevant, since PVI only measures Presidential vote and includes Bush's overperformance in South Texas. They usually elect Democrats to Congress (two of them not this year, but that's unimportant--what matters is that they routinely elect the preferred minority-group candidate in most years; occasional hiccups like Cao in LA-02 are acceptable).

Also, TX-23 was drawn by the courts to minimally disrupt the rest of the map to undo part of the Perrymander that diluted Hispanic voting power too much. It is therefore probably the absolute most Republican any court would allow a VRA district to be, and on this year's results might be considered still a VRA violation by a court reanalyzing the issue.

Wait, come to think of it TX-23 had a Republican representative between 1994 and 2006.  Doesn't that by definition make it a non-VRA District?

He may have been winning a majority of the Hispanic vote. I don't know. The reason the courts redrew the seat in 2005 (and Bonilla then lost) was because it was considered an unfair dilution of the Hispanic vote. The district was much more Democratic until 2004, when Laredo was taken out of the seat when DeLay redrew the Texas map, so it may have been considered acceptable back then.

[Torie]

Ciro in losing CD-23 this time, lost while still getting about 75% of the Hispanic vote, and maybe a bit more. It was differential turnouts which sank him mostly, vis a vis when he first beat Bonilla in 2006 I guess. That was what I inferred in looking at the numbers. The Anglo voters in the CD are hyper GOP. It is illegal to be an Anglo liberal in CD-23 as it were.

[Sam Spade]

Ciro in losing CD-23 this time, lost while still getting about 75% of the Hispanic vote, and maybe a bit more. It was differential turnouts which sank him mostly, vis a vis when he first beat Bonilla in 2006 I guess. That was what I inferred in looking at the numbers. The Anglo voters in the CD are hyper GOP. It is illegal to be an Anglo liberal in CD-23 as it were.

With the exception of the centers of Houston, Dallas and especially Austin (of course, as well as other college spots), it is illegal pretty much to be an Anglo liberal in Texas.

Dems have been able to pull off moderate Anglos in the Dallas/Houston suburbs more and more over the last 10 years, especially Obama and down ballot, but they almost all flipped back this year (Dem success in these areas was also (perhaps more) due to browning - it is sometimes difficult to note the difference until you get at precinct-level).  The swing was almost uniform, especially down ballot.

Anyway, we certainly do need more Texas maps - the GOP will do whatever they get away with legally there.

[Skill and Chance]

Some pressure group really needs to put something equivalent to California's Prop 20 on the Texas and Illinois ballots in 2012, and try to make it take effect for 2014 if at all possible.

[jimrtex]

Which current districts are VRA districts?  23, 27, 28 are R+4, R+2, R+0 in PVI - does that mean they're not?  

Also, TX-23 was drawn by the courts to minimally disrupt the rest of the map to undo part of the Perrymander that diluted Hispanic voting power too much. It is therefore probably the absolute most Republican any court would allow a VRA district to be, and on this year's results might be considered still a VRA violation by a court reanalyzing the issue.

Wait, come to think of it TX-23 had a Republican representative between 1994 and 2006.  Doesn't that by definition make it a non-VRA District?

The Democrats (this was the Frostrocity redistricting) flipped TX-23 in 1992, when the incumbent Democrat Albert Bustamante was building a new house on the Northside of San Antonio and requested that the district be drawn to include his new house.   It also got shifted further north and west to make room for the new TX-28.  From the time it had been created in 1966 in the wake of the one man, one vote decision, the Republicans had only contested the seat 4 times.  Unfortunately, the neighborhood of the big  new house had too many Republicans.  In addition, Bustamante was caught up in the House postal bank scandal, and ads showing the big new house along the hot checks gave the impression of a congressman who had gone to Washington and done well.  Henry Bonilla had been a news anchor in San Antonio, and thumped Bustamante in Bexar County, and had a slight lead elsewhere in the district.

The court-ordered redistricting in 2001 left the district basically unchanged, but Henry Cuellar from Laredo came within 2% of beating Bonilla.  Cuellar carried Webb County 5:1, while Bonilla barely managed a 4:1 margin in Bexar County.  When Bustamante was first elected in 1984, he had defeated the 9-term incumbent from Laredo, Abraham Kazen in the primary, and there was a feeling that Laredo deserved its own representation.

In 2003, the legislature shifted the district further north in order to ensure Bonilla's reelection.  It created a new TX-25 running from Austin-McAllen, and moved TX-28 to include half of Webb County.  Cuellar defeated Ciro Rodriguez in the Democratic primary in TX-28.

The Supreme Court ruled that TX-25 was not a valid VRA district because it was not compact enough.  Had it not been for that finding, it would not have mattered what was done in TX-23.

[jimrtex]

Some pressure group really needs to put something equivalent to California's Prop 20 on the Texas and Illinois ballots in 2012, and try to make it take effect for 2014 if at all possible.

Race-neutral and politically-neutral redistricting should be required that produces compact districts that conform to political boundaries.

Then voters in individual precincts should be permitted to switch districts so long as it:

(1) Enhances racial segregation between the two districts; and
(2) Makes at least one of the districts less compact

[muon2]

Some pressure group really needs to put something equivalent to California's Prop 20 on the Texas and Illinois ballots in 2012, and try to make it take effect for 2014 if at all possible.

There was a huge push to do that in IL starting in late 2009. The League of Women Voters lined up with many statewide groups to push an initiative called the Fair Map Amendment. It would have set up an independent commission and criteria for that commission. Unfortunately it fell well short of the required number of signatures to reach the ballot. I anticipate that the groups will try again, but it's very difficult to get a ballot question on by petition in IL.