US House Redistricting: Texas

[minionofmidas]

According to the bolded logic, the Democrats never would have been able to remove Montgomery County (Alabama) from the 7th district. Yet they did.

Yeah, I know.

Basically these are the kind of things you can't do if you want to be extra certain to follow the case law to the t, but that legislatures will be fine with taking a low-risk gamble on. As such, its presence in what's officially a court map stinks a little. But, like, that doesn't tell us anything about these proceedings that we didn't know already.

Jim: Where is Corpus distant compared to, you know, the places northwest of it that were used instead?

[minionofmidas]

They did, of course, rule that last time around. (Include that in the remedy for the problems found elsewhere.)

[minionofmidas]

That seems to put SSRV on a stronger footing than CVAP as a proxy for voting strength. Voting analysis can follow. An ecological analysis is probably needed to discern whether the minority engages in sufficient bloc voting to meet the Gingles test for section 2 districts.

Sort of, though Spanish surnamed and Hispanic are not equivalent.

And what is the measure of "sufficiency"?

I would think the reason why people just used the SSVR data and didn't do complex estimative calculations of actual CVAP is presumably that it was available real data, didn't cost anything to produce, and seemed good enough until/unless a court said it wasn't.
Does similar real data actually exist for California?

[minionofmidas]

Hank Sizzlin' Cisneros. He still around?

[minionofmidas]

How does it make any sense to still be deliberating over the maps when the congressional primaries have already taken place?

So they didn't pass an injunction against using the maps which of course means they'll probably dismiss all suits, but they haven't done that yet.

As to the question - I wouldn't doubt for a minute that what White vote there is in El Paso played a role in fashioning that winning coalition. But it's a bit questionable how much more Hispanics can be packed into the district... and anyways it, cough, borders another rather more marginally Hispanic opportunity district, and no other district whatsoever. So fixing this district would require bumping the 23rd's Hispanic share as well, presumably in San Antonio, and you would hate that. Bottom line: no one with court access has an interest in it, and thus it will not happen.

[minionofmidas]

Oh, and of course Lloyd Doggett easily survived yet another attempt by Republicans to replace him with an Hispanic (as was self-evident, really). Though in that case, Doggett presumably had majority support from Hispanics.

[minionofmidas]

Found some exit poll data (for whatever that poll is worth):

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Source: El Paso Times

[minionofmidas]

Ooh, neat.

[minionofmidas]

Does O'Rouke's victory mean that all MALDEF has to show for its ligitation is the loss of one Hispanic Democratic Congressman?

They will show that Reyes is the Hispanic "candidate of choice" and that bloc voting by whites denied him renomination, and that in the past a "coalition" would vote for the Democrat in the general election.

And in the future. Incidentally, O'Rourke got ~45% of the Hispanic vote according to that exit poll (hardly not a Hispanic candidate of choice as well, then) and still wouldn't have won if it wasn't for the unusually large turnout gap (which is of course the troubling/creating-a-genuine-issue part.)
In the unlikely case that it happens again exactly like that in 2014... the Hispanic candidate has a legitimate point.

[minionofmidas]

The San Antonio Court has declined citing the timeline. Thus, elections will proceed under plan C235.


C185 is thus scrapped, and will almost certainly be moot in 2013 when the legislature returns to do redistricting.

Are these respectively the lines used in the primary and the map passed by the state lege?

[minionofmidas]

The San Antonio Court has declined citing the timeline. Thus, elections will proceed under plan C235.


C185 is thus scrapped, and will almost certainly be moot in 2013 when the legislature returns to do redistricting.

Are these respectively the lines used in the primary and the map passed by the state lege?

C220 - San Antonio initial plan
C185 - Legislature map
C235 - Court map based on lege


C235 takes C185, builds the Veasey district, and makes minor tweaks elsewhere.

Yeah, I remember their relationship to each other, I just don't memorize official names/numbers.

[minionofmidas]

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That's pretty clearcut, and the maps are of course ones drawn by Republicans, as emended by the courts, as opposed to actual court-drawn maps. A new even more Republican map will inevitably come under close court scrutiny yet again.

Whether all of the Texas House and Senate Republican caucus see things the same way is another matter entirely.

[minionofmidas]

Wait, what? What are they playing at?

[minionofmidas]

The state is simply trying to toss everything regarding the 2011 maps.

Which is reasonable given that the maps themselves have been tossed.