2020 Texas Redistricting thread

[EastAnglianLefty]

Pretty sure plenty of those districts are not VRA-compliant. It's not enough for a district to have a majority of electors from a particular demographic group, they also have to be able to elect the candidate of their choice. In several of those districts Hispanics can't, because although they're a clear majority of the population their turnout rates are sufficiently low that they'll get outvoted by whites.

What's more, several of them fail the Gingles test both on the grounds of both compactness and cohesiveness - it's hard to argue that Laredo Hispanics are essentially equivalent to Lubbock Hispanics in terms of political behaviour.

[EastAnglianLefty]

The delayed census count introduces an interesting wrinkle into the process.  If the legislature has to convene a special session to redistrict after its normal session ends in May of 2021, the maps will only be valid for one election and must be redrawn at the next regular legislative session in 2023.  Also, the backup commission has no constitutional authority to step in and draw the legislative maps if there is a deadlock in a special session.

It would be able to step in after a deadlock in the 2023 regular session, but all of the statewide offices that make up 4 of the 5 seats on the backup commission are up for statewide election in 2022 and the 5th seat is the Speaker of the State House, so it is possible control of the backup commission could flip.  The commission includes the LG and AG who both won by <5% in 2018.  The most likely scenario where the backup commission would come into play would be if Democrats control the state house (whether they flipped it in 2020 or 2022 doesn't really matter) or if they flipped the governorship in 2022.  Thus, if 2022 is another Trump midterm, it is, remarkably, now plausible that Democrats could be in a position to draw the the state legislative maps in 2023.

With all this uncertainty hanging out there, I wonder if a deal could be struck on sending a nonpartisan commission amendment to the voters in 2022 if there is a split legislature after 2020?

I wonder if there's a chance Texas Republicans would try to stick in commissions with strong compactness requirements as a method of packing Hispanics more along the Rio Grande and in urban areas? The Fifth Circuit Court is thoroughly in the tank for them, so they'd only have to worry about the Supreme Court striking it down and if they were willing to say compact Rio Grande districts aren't unconstitutional packing, that ought to save them at least one congressional district.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Some of those Rio Grande districts probably don't pass constitutional muster according to current jurisprudence. According to Wikipedia, in 2010 the three Rio Grande districts were 82%, 79% and 84% Hispanic by total population. You can probably get down to more or less that level just by exchanging territory within your 2nd, 3rd and 4th districts.

There may also be an issue with your 28th, given that the 23rd has historically been a protected VRA district. But I wouldn't be certain of that, given that the Hispanic community there has only managed to elect the candidate of their choice once out of four attempts since redistricting and the district hasn't been struck down.

[EastAnglianLefty]

As I recall, the issue with the 25th was that the primary appeared to be controlled by Austin liberals, as their turnout was much higher than border Hispanics, so it didn't count as a VRA district.

Regarding Cuellar, would there be any mileage in giving his a district combining Laredo and the western end of TX-23? It looks like you would need to grab a few heavily Republican counties to avoid it becoming a racial pack, but it's still a good way of soaking up Democratic votes whilst making Cuellar much safer from primary challenges.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Here's an attempt at a fair map: https://davesredistricting.org/join/71efe28f-948a-4a47-b47f-060d17830482





18 safely Republican seats, 15 safely Democratic, 6 swing seats (defined as D+5 to R+6.) However, Clinton won five of those swing districts and the other (the Arlington-based 6th) only went for Trump by 0.3%.

8 performing Hispanic VRA seats (El Paso, 4 along the border, 2 in San Antonio, 1 in Houston) and at least one Hispanic opportunity seat (the NW Dallas seat.) The three existing black VRA seats are maintained and Veasey would probably be favoured in the 33rd.

I'm quite pleased with how neatly the lines worked out for the two San Antonio districts and with how neatly Laredo fits in the 23rd. Houston is also fairly clean, although Montgomery County gets cut up more than I'd like. Not as keen on splitting the Panhandle, but I didn't want to split Lubbock or to have three West Texas seats and that was the only clean way to accomplish that.

That fajitas look particularly ugly in this map, but a Corpus Christi-suburban San Antonio seat wouldn't perform on 2016 numbers. That said, the Bexar portion of the 28th is full of areas which were clearly still being built out in 2016, so it might just be viable by 2020.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Not too bothered either way about those suggestions for Dallas and Houston, but I disagree on Austin - the river looks to me like a fairly significant barrier and I think it's better to respect that than to unite areas which may nominally be rural but which are still functionally a short drive from a major urban centre.