What Primary Turnout Means for Redistricting
February 29th, 2008 at 10:39 am
We’ve talked a bit about what record turnout in the primary will do for down-ballot races in the general election in November. Now it’s time to speculate on what this could mean for the Big Enchiladas of Texas politics — legislative and congressional redistricting. All the jockeying over who is speaker of the state House and the speculation over the governor’s race, much of that is really about who will control the levers of redistricting in 2011.
Every few days when I return to this subject to write a post on the impact of the primary, the early vote numbers just get more intense. (Btw, last day for early voting is today, Friday, February 29.) Charles Kuffner over at Off the Kuff was kind enough to post a pdf of a memo from Professor Richard Murray. The good professor at the University of Houston looked at turnout in 15 of the biggest counties up until Sunday. He extrapolates from the numbers to conclude that conservatively the early vote for Democrats will be about 1.2 million. He further projects that the final vote in the Democratic primary will be about 2.6 million. This would be more voters in the Democratic primary than the days when Texas was completely Democratic and the primary was the only game in town. Granted the state has grown quite a bit since then, but still…
Now to redistricting. The Legislature will likely take it up in 2011 based on the 2010 Census. But drawing maps and defending them in court also depends on past turnout and showing where the voters are. That was a difficult task for Democrats in recent years because of the anemic Democratic turnout. Obviously, if the Democrats win more seats in November and in 2010, then they can make a more persuasive case that they deserve more seats in redistricting. But the turnout numbers this time around will also show how many potential Democratic voters are out there.
Matt Angle who runs the Lone Star Project is working this hard, focusing in part on North Texas where his old boss Martin Frost lost a seat after Tom DeLay redistricted the area. “The problem in [the redistricting of ] ’91 and ’01 was that there weren’t elections that could demonstrate that a Hispanic could win a congressional district in North Texas,” he says. “It was a legal argument.”
If record numbers of Latinos come out in North Texas and Dallas, and Sheriff Lupe Valdez wins a primary against two African Americans and an Anglo challenger, then there is a convincing case to be made that the area deserves another Hispanic congressional seat. The population numbers warrant it. But until now, the voter behavior didn’t. That could change with this primary.
February 29th, 2008 at 11:31 am
fyi…
AUSTIN — The Texas Democratic Party warned Thursday that election night caucuses scheduled for next Tuesday could be delayed or disrupted after aides to Hillary Clinton threatened to sue over the party’s complicated delegate selection process.
In a letter sent out late Thursday to both the Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns, Texas Democratic Party lawyer Chad Dunn warned a lawsuit could ruin the Democrats’ effort to re-energize voters just as they are turning out in record numbers.
Spokesmen for both campaigns said there were no plans to sue ahead of the March 4 election.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/29019.html
February 29th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Check out current.com for the Democratic Messiah video.
March 2nd, 2008 at 11:04 am
The redistricting article makes an interesting point but misses a crucial fact. Even if Democrats take back the Texas House this year or in 2010, they will not have enough votes in the Texas Senate to pass a redistricting bill that favors them. It only takes 11 votes to block a bill in the Senate and under any scenario the Rs will have that many Senators. Failing to pass a legislative redistricting bill in 2011 will once again bring the Legislative Redistricting Board into existence. Even if Texas Democrats elect a House Speaker, they would have to also take two of the statewide seats on that Board to work their will. More likely, that Board will be constituted by a strong majority of Republicans, who will again draw the lines to the disadvantage of Democrats. At that point, Democrats’ best hope is to control the Justice Department in hopes of making progress through the Voting Rights Act. Litigation will end up in federal courts shaped by recent administrations. Let the gnashing of teeth begin.
March 3rd, 2008 at 7:21 am
The law of congressional redistricting is interesting to think about but, as always, uncomfortable to talk about because of its bizarre (pre-Obama, one can hope) assumption that people vote based on their own race. That said, Matt Angle is right that the very low historical turnout of Hispanic voters has hindered the Voting Rights Act claims that would have required a Hispanic-majority district to be drawn in north Texas. That’s because those claims require statistical proof that the proposed district would actually be controlled by the protected group. So, bigger Hispanic turnout in urban areas in 2008 would help — but if all groups in those urban areas are equally energized, it may not help that much. Indeed, if resurgent Hispanic voters strongly align anti-Obama, as all the media suggests, then their higher turnouts may further hinder the creation of coalition districts like the one that Congressman Frost represented for so many years (and like the one that Congressman Doggett argued should be required in Austin).
keenobserver has a point about future state legislative maps but is not quite correct about congressional districting, which in Texas never goes to LRB. Instead, if there is a deadlock (such as if two different parties hold power and cannot agree to divide the pie in a suitably incumbent-protecting way), the first map will be drawn in court, as it was in 2001. There are circumstances in which a purely court-drawn map could also bypass DOJ scrutiny (as it did in 2001), leaving only the courts as a check.