2020 Texas Redistricting thread

[Death of a Salesman]

Will anything be touched here?

Potential problems:

-South Texas is always a battleground for obvious reasons; if the current map is illegal or not in that regard depends on the interepreter

-Not having a 2nd Hispanic seat fully within Bexar; you could create 2 solid Hispanic seats fully within Bexar and an opportunity seat in Austin. This is honestly prolly the strongest current argument against the current map.

-Dallas could have another functional minority seat

-Houston is weird cause you have 2 black and 1 hispanic seat when based on population it should be the other way around. You could do 2 black and 2 Hispanic seats though

Again, I think I need more specifics of the ruling. Does it mandate opportunity seats or keeping clear communities or minorities whole, or only seats that are outright majority?

If Republicans don’t have a case in New Mexico, Democrats don’t have a case in Texas. The Hispanic population is not politically cohesive. Now, the five liberals on the court have ignored logic before, but that sort of shameless double standard is beyond even them.

Under that’s argument, the current TX-35 connects very in cohesive cohorts of Hisapanic voters whereas 2 districts nested entirely within Bexar would represent cohesive community of Hispanics.

Drawing two majority Hispanic districts in a county that is 59% Hispanic would require an obvious gerrymander that would deny the white minority the ability to elect the candidate of their choice. This should not be required under the VRA if it is applied neutrally.

That's just terrible logic.



The blue area is udner 60% white, and could hold approximately 10 CDs. You think you could draw a single functional VRA seat within this region? No. That's because direct proportionality tends to be impossible.

Alsoi Bexar can hold almost 3 seats entirely within it. So if the County is 60% Hispanic, having 2 Hispanic seats and 1 white seats is the fairest thing you could do.

Trump clearly won a majority of Hispanic voters in that area. The VRA does not mandate Democratic seats in cases where the minority group is majority Republican. Bexar County has the population for 2.62 districts, so drawing two performing majority Hispanic districts there requires massive gerrymandering.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Will anything be touched here?

Potential problems:

-South Texas is always a battleground for obvious reasons; if the current map is illegal or not in that regard depends on the interepreter

-Not having a 2nd Hispanic seat fully within Bexar; you could create 2 solid Hispanic seats fully within Bexar and an opportunity seat in Austin. This is honestly prolly the strongest current argument against the current map.

-Dallas could have another functional minority seat

-Houston is weird cause you have 2 black and 1 hispanic seat when based on population it should be the other way around. You could do 2 black and 2 Hispanic seats though

Again, I think I need more specifics of the ruling. Does it mandate opportunity seats or keeping clear communities or minorities whole, or only seats that are outright majority?

If Republicans don’t have a case in New Mexico, Democrats don’t have a case in Texas. The Hispanic population is not politically cohesive. Now, the five liberals on the court have ignored logic before, but that sort of shameless double standard is beyond even them.

Under that’s argument, the current TX-35 connects very in cohesive cohorts of Hisapanic voters whereas 2 districts nested entirely within Bexar would represent cohesive community of Hispanics.

Drawing two majority Hispanic districts in a county that is 59% Hispanic would require an obvious gerrymander that would deny the white minority the ability to elect the candidate of their choice. This should not be required under the VRA if it is applied neutrally.

That's just terrible logic.



The blue area is udner 60% white, and could hold approximately 10 CDs. You think you could draw a single functional VRA seat within this region? No. That's because direct proportionality tends to be impossible.

Alsoi Bexar can hold almost 3 seats entirely within it. So if the County is 60% Hispanic, having 2 Hispanic seats and 1 white seats is the fairest thing you could do.

Trump clearly won a majority of Hispanic voters in that area. The VRA does not mandate Democratic seats in cases where the minority group is majority Republican. Bexar County has the population for 2.62 districts, so drawing two performing majority Hispanic districts there requires massive gerrymandering.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/ad6490f1-744e-47f0-8528-53676e11c080

Here's an example of a map. TX-20 sinks the most heavily Hispanic parts of Bexar to be nearly 3/4ths Hispanic. TX-21 is just under 50% but still functional, and TX-35 which takes in Comal and Guadlupe Counties is still 35% Hispanic. If the County is 60% Hispanic and has 2.6 seats and many of the counties immediately surrounding it have notable Hispanic populations, it's basically impossible to not draw at the very least 1 functional Hispanic seat and 1 strong opportunity seat that will probably become functional as the Hispanic population grows.

[ProgressiveModerate]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/ad6490f1-744e-47f0-8528-53676e11c080

Here's my first draft of a VRA complient and fair Texas (2020 Pres shown above).

One thing that makes Texas tricky is that there are a lot of places where you can reach 30 or 40% seats pretty easily but actually getting over 50% without doing something absurd becomes tricky. In many cases though a 40% black district can be functional.

Another challenge in particuar with Dallas and Houston metros is that a lot of these VRA seats sort of compete with each other and are difficult to draw all at once just due to how mixed together different racial groups are.

I also tried to make Asian opportunity seats in both Dallas and Houston (TX-03 and TX-07 respectively). However in this case TX-07 came at a bit of the expense of TX-09 which is the black seat in South Houston.

Also I still wanna figure out what to do with RGV; I don't like fajitas but I'm also not a fan of this config. I wanna give TX-28 more border and TX-34 more inland while not making 34 a fajita.

I would say so far I'm most happy with I-35 corridor Austin-San Antonio districts. It creates 2 VRA Hispanic seats and one that should be functional, and generally abides to city lines and COIs quite well. Still want to fix Houston and RGV in particular; I think Dallas is close to an ideal config but needs some changes, and I think the ways rurals are chopped up could be better.

Please give feedback/suggestions.

[Torie]

Bexar can certainly have two Hispanic CD's nested in Bexar and arguably the VRA requires that rather than an Hispanic seat running from Austin to San Antonio.



https://davesredistricting.org/join/f1b8563b-df97-4a1b-b068-99cca48613e4

[Brittain33]

deny the white minority the ability to elect the candidate of their choice

This has nothing to do with the Voting Rights Act because there is no systematic and centuries-long oppression of white Americans in Texas to the benefit of African Americans or Hispanics. Being outnumbered in a county isn’t that.

[Death of a Salesman]

deny the white minority the ability to elect the candidate of their choice

This has nothing to do with the Voting Rights Act because there is no systematic and centuries-long oppression of white Americans in Texas to the benefit of African Americans or Hispanics. Being outnumbered in a county isn’t that.

The 14th Amendment created equal citizenship, not affirmative action democracy. If racial gerrymanders are illegal, they are illegal across the board.

[Brittain33]

deny the white minority the ability to elect the candidate of their choice

This has nothing to do with the Voting Rights Act because there is no systematic and centuries-long oppression of white Americans in Texas to the benefit of African Americans or Hispanics. Being outnumbered in a county isn’t that.

The 14th Amendment created equal citizenship, not affirmative action democracy. If racial gerrymanders are illegal, they are illegal across the board.

Cool, get yourself on a federal court and perhaps this theory could be tested and adopted and affect how the law is practiced. Under current jurisprudence, what you wrote is as relevant and meaningful as a Santos LinkedIn endorsement.

[Death of a Salesman]

deny the white minority the ability to elect the candidate of their choice

This has nothing to do with the Voting Rights Act because there is no systematic and centuries-long oppression of white Americans in Texas to the benefit of African Americans or Hispanics. Being outnumbered in a county isn’t that.

The 14th Amendment created equal citizenship, not affirmative action democracy. If racial gerrymanders are illegal, they are illegal across the board.

Cool, get yourself on a federal court and perhaps this theory could be tested and adopted and affect how the law is practiced. Under current jurisprudence, what you wrote is as relevant and meaningful as a Santos LinkedIn endorsement.

Where’s the lawsuit, then? Texas has a congressional map which doesn’t endorse your insane theories.

[Sol]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/ad6490f1-744e-47f0-8528-53676e11c080

Here's my first draft of a VRA complient and fair Texas (2020 Pres shown above).

One thing that makes Texas tricky is that there are a lot of places where you can reach 30 or 40% seats pretty easily but actually getting over 50% without doing something absurd becomes tricky. In many cases though a 40% black district can be functional.

Another challenge in particuar with Dallas and Houston metros is that a lot of these VRA seats sort of compete with each other and are difficult to draw all at once just due to how mixed together different racial groups are.

I also tried to make Asian opportunity seats in both Dallas and Houston (TX-03 and TX-07 respectively). However in this case TX-07 came at a bit of the expense of TX-09 which is the black seat in South Houston.

Also I still wanna figure out what to do with RGV; I don't like fajitas but I'm also not a fan of this config. I wanna give TX-28 more border and TX-34 more inland while not making 34 a fajita.

I would say so far I'm most happy with I-35 corridor Austin-San Antonio districts. It creates 2 VRA Hispanic seats and one that should be functional, and generally abides to city lines and COIs quite well. Still want to fix Houston and RGV in particular; I think Dallas is close to an ideal config but needs some changes, and I think the ways rurals are chopped up could be better.

Please give feedback/suggestions.

There's actually a pretty easy group of three districts that you can nest into the Austin area-- Williamson, Travis, Hays, Bastrop, Caldwell, and Lee are a perfect size for three seats.

Personally I like to do things like this:

[ProgressiveModerate]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/ad6490f1-744e-47f0-8528-53676e11c080

Here's my first draft of a VRA complient and fair Texas (2020 Pres shown above).

One thing that makes Texas tricky is that there are a lot of places where you can reach 30 or 40% seats pretty easily but actually getting over 50% without doing something absurd becomes tricky. In many cases though a 40% black district can be functional.

Another challenge in particuar with Dallas and Houston metros is that a lot of these VRA seats sort of compete with each other and are difficult to draw all at once just due to how mixed together different racial groups are.

I also tried to make Asian opportunity seats in both Dallas and Houston (TX-03 and TX-07 respectively). However in this case TX-07 came at a bit of the expense of TX-09 which is the black seat in South Houston.

Also I still wanna figure out what to do with RGV; I don't like fajitas but I'm also not a fan of this config. I wanna give TX-28 more border and TX-34 more inland while not making 34 a fajita.

I would say so far I'm most happy with I-35 corridor Austin-San Antonio districts. It creates 2 VRA Hispanic seats and one that should be functional, and generally abides to city lines and COIs quite well. Still want to fix Houston and RGV in particular; I think Dallas is close to an ideal config but needs some changes, and I think the ways rurals are chopped up could be better.

Please give feedback/suggestions.

There's actually a pretty easy group of three districts that you can nest into the Austin area-- Williamson, Travis, Hays, Bastrop, Caldwell, and Lee are a perfect size for three seats.

Personally I like to do things like this:

Damn that works out quite nice

[GALeftist]

So I have a question regarding Section 2 claims as they pertain to Texas Hispanics. The first prong seems easy enough to satisfy, but how do prongs 2 and 3 work? Like, thinking about prong 2, I think you could for sure argue that Hispanics in Bexar County vote similarly, but it gets pretty murky elsewhere. RGV Hispanics are now like 60/40 Democratic leaning, tops; is that enough to say they vote similarly? Are just RGV Hispanics their own group for these purposes, since Hispanics farther north are much more Republican, or is something like the current TX-15 where bluer RGV Hispanics are outvoted by redder Hispanics fine? What about prong 3; can you really say white bloc voting is an issue in areas that are 90% Hispanic?

[ProgressiveModerate]

So I have a question regarding Section 2 claims as they pertain to Texas Hispanics. The first prong seems easy enough to satisfy, but how do prongs 2 and 3 work? Like, thinking about prong 2, I think you could for sure argue that Hispanics in Bexar County vote similarly, but it gets pretty murky elsewhere. RGV Hispanics are now like 60/40 Democratic leaning, tops; is that enough to say they vote similarly? Are just RGV Hispanics their own group for these purposes, since Hispanics farther north are much more Republican, or is something like the current TX-15 where bluer RGV Hispanics are outvoted by redder Hispanics fine? What about prong 3; can you really say white bloc voting is an issue in areas that are 90% Hispanic?

There are a lot of things that muddy the water in Texas.

The first problem with Texas is just the state is so large and so diverse. In a place like Alabama, a VRA case is easier to make because it's very clear the possible options are either no black seats, 1 black seats, or 2 black seats; anything beyond that becomes unrealistic to draw.

The second issue is as you allude to the Hispanic community is non-homogenous. I think Texas having a high Hispanic-White population further complicates this. Furthermore, many Hispanic communities in Texas have extremely low turnout so it's actually hard to tell if rural Hispanics further inland are actually more conservative or are just outvoted by white voters. If you look at many of the most Hispanic precincts in the rural Texas pandle, you can clearly tell they are significantly less Republican than rural white precincts that neighbor them, in some cases Biden losing the precinct by less than 20 points. In these cases, it's actually possible Biden may have outright won the Hispanic vote in much of the rural/small town TX panhandle, or he at least came close, but these Hispanics turn out at such a low rate and white voters vote so lopsidedly R it doesn't matter.

In TX-15 for instance, I actually think Hispanics in Wilson and Guadalupe County may have voted for Biden, and almost certainly if you factor out Hispanic-Whites. At the very least I can say for certain Hispanics in the Northern Part of TX-15 overall are not voting for Trump by 70-30 or even 60-40 type margins in the 2020 election. However, because the district is 80% Hispanic on official census numbers and you have a grey area of Hispanic Whites, in practice even if Hispanics split like 55D-45R in the district, they control both the D and R primary, but the reamining white voters allow the Republican Hispanic to always win.

That's another issue with TX Hispanics, because they turn out at such a low rate, a plurality or even a majority Hispanic district isn't neccessarily functional. TX-18 is plurality Hispanic but functions as a black VRA seat, and TX-33 is majority Hispanic but currently has a black representative. In a place like Houston, you can draw 2 seats that are majority Hispanic, but if the seats start taking in too many other Democrats, they will no longer be functional, and if they take in too many higher turnout Republican precincts, they could lean right and again be non-functional.

If you go by the proportionality metric, Texas should have about 14 Hispanic seats, but that's quite hard to draw because they're low turnout and can easily be outvoted either by white Republicans or other racial groups of Dems. By proportionality, Texas should have 5 black VRA seats, but in practice the most you can get is 3 (1 in Dallas and 2 in Houston). There should also be 2 Asian seats but an outright Asian majority seat is currently impossible, though weaker opportunity seats can be drawn in both Dallas and Houston.

I honestly don't think there's a clear precedent on how to deal with VRA in TX overall for these reasons.

[GALeftist]

Awesome, thanks! After some research and some tinkering, here's one (partial) map I think I would submit, were I suing Texas for violating Section 2:



(Ignore the Bexar County districts, they are just placeholders)

Every district drawn here other than TX-37 in Austin is intended to be a Hispanic VRA district. The basic contentions of this map are:

1. South/West Texas Hispanics are still politically cohesive enough to satisfy prong 2 of Gingles (debatable, but I think defensible, especially when you contrast the severely weakened but unmistakable Democratic lean of these communities with the almost unanimous rural white support for Republicans in Texas)
2. The fajitas are unnecessary – assuming high relative white turnout, TX-15 already likely (by design!) failed to elect the candidate of choice of its Hispanic community, and TX-34 is approaching 90% Hispanic as-is, so this alternative is no more a racial pack than the status quo
3. TX-23 is compact enough as drawn here to satisfy prong 1 of Gingles. This is honestly pretty iffy, but in fairness, it's not a LA-02 style snake or anything, it just has a lot of sparsely populated rural territory that inflates its size. El Paso to Hidalgo isn't really that much more offensive than the status quo of El Paso to Bexar

If this or something similar was enacted, it would have several beneficial effects from the Democratic perspective. Firstly, the elimination of TX-35 as a snake from Travis to Bexar makes it much more difficult to contain all the blue in the Austin area to just one sink. If the court bites on TX-23, that would also probably flip.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Awesome, thanks! After some research and some tinkering, here's one (partial) map I think I would submit, were I suing Texas for violating Section 2:



(Ignore the Bexar County districts, they are just placeholders)

Every district drawn here other than TX-37 in Austin is intended to be a Hispanic VRA district. The basic contentions of this map are:

1. South/West Texas Hispanics are still politically cohesive enough to satisfy prong 2 of Gingles (debatable, but I think defensible, especially when you contrast the severely weakened but unmistakable Democratic lean of these communities with the almost unanimous rural white support for Republicans in Texas)
2. The fajitas are unnecessary – assuming high relative white turnout, TX-15 already likely (by design!) failed to elect the candidate of choice of its Hispanic community, and TX-34 is approaching 90% Hispanic as-is, so this alternative is no more a racial pack than the status quo
3. TX-23 is compact enough as drawn here to satisfy prong 1 of Gingles. This is honestly pretty iffy, but in fairness, it's not a LA-02 style snake or anything, it just has a lot of sparsely populated rural territory that inflates its size. El Paso to Hidalgo isn't really that much more offensive than the status quo of El Paso to Bexar

If this or something similar was enacted, it would have several beneficial effects from the Democratic perspective. Firstly, the elimination of TX-35 as a snake from Travis to Bexar makes it much more difficult to contain all the blue in the Austin area to just one sink. If the court bites on TX-23, that would also probably flip.

I think this is a good map, but it wouldn't be sufficient in a VRA case because here you're actually taking away a Hispanic seat from the border (currently 5 on your map 4).

If you could draw 5 Hispanic Boarder seats that don't go into Bexar very much if at all, and are hence able to draw 2 Hispanic seats entirely within Bexar, and then a Hispanic seat in Austin and some surrounding Hispanic communities for a total of 8 Hispanic seats, you would've added a Hispanic seat and would be able to bring VRA claim. In order to do this though, one or two of the Border Hispanic seats probably has to be an R leaning functional district that allows Conservative Hispanics to control the primary and elect their candidate of choice.

I think that's another aspect of VRA that's unclear though. If the racial group controls both primaries, but the district leans towards the party that the majority of that racial group in the district doesn't support, is that calid under VRA?

[ProgressiveModerate]

Here are some examples of how you could challenge VRA in TX. All the seats in this map are majority Hispanic (except for the 2 black seats in Houston), and all seats would be VRA functional. Compared to the current map, this adds another Hispanic seat in San Antonio and consolidates TX-35 to Austin. It also creates 2 Hispanic seats in Houston that would keep the current 2 black seats. So on net, 2 Hispanic seats are gained from the current map.

All of the border seats are over 80% CVAP Hispanic so even if some could go R topline, it'd be Hispanic Rs controlling that primary. The weakest link here might actually be the rural/South Bexar seat because it's swingy narrowly voting for Biden in 2020 but is "only" 70% Hispanic. It also connects very seperate communities in Corpus Christi and San Antonio - you pretty much have to use Corpus Cristi to create 5 Hispanic seats in South Texas that don't take in a significant chunk of Bexar. The other option here could be to give TX-23 (the massive border seat) the Bexar Portion and reconfigure the 3  South Texas seats with Laredo (see below). This might be preferable because it balances TX-23 and TX-28 with both about 75% Hispanic CVAP.

Also note that the Austin seat on this map is messy because it shows how you can create as Hispanic of a district as possible (and that a majority Hispanic seat is possible to draw without going into Bexar). In reality, you can draw a much cleaner 45-47% CVAP seat that'd be functional.

Alt Config w a cleaner 47% Hispanic CVAP Austin seat (52% by Total Pop):

[GALeftist]

I think this is a good map, but it wouldn't be sufficient in a VRA case because here you're actually taking away a Hispanic seat from the border (currently 5 on your map 4).

If you could draw 5 Hispanic Boarder seats that don't go into Bexar very much if at all, and are hence able to draw 2 Hispanic seats entirely within Bexar, and then a Hispanic seat in Austin and some surrounding Hispanic communities for a total of 8 Hispanic seats, you would've added a Hispanic seat and would be able to bring VRA claim. In order to do this though, one or two of the Border Hispanic seats probably has to be an R leaning functional district that allows Conservative Hispanics to control the primary and elect their candidate of choice.

I think that's another aspect of VRA that's unclear though. If the racial group controls both primaries, but the district leans towards the party that the majority of that racial group in the district doesn't support, is that calid under VRA?

I think part of the case I would make here is that TX-35 as it is currently drawn is not actually a performing Hispanic district for the purposes of Section 2. It's only 51% Hispanic by CVAP, so I suspect that the Hispanic community doesn't actually reliably control the primary (if there is one Hispanic community represented in TX-35 and not several different ones, which I would also dispute). My argument would therefore be that the number of performing Hispanic districts is actually increased by two; TX-23 and TX-15 should now perform, while TX-28 is replaced by TX-35.

[Arizona Iced Tea]

Sorry for the bump, but I just wanted to show this map:

I made a 26D-12R Dem gerrymander in Texas. If Dems have the trifecta after 2030, I guess its possible they could even draw 30 Dem seats if TX does indeed gain 4 new districts.




It probably needs 1 more VRA black seat, but that shouldn't be an issue by 2030 when they can afford to put another seat in the Houston and DFW areas without messing up the crack. Even Beto won every blue seat so it seems pretty solid, even though the margins can get rather thin.