Michelle Lee talks about the recent redistricting crisis in an article on her blog, The Blue State Special. She makes the point that while the state’s population is growing and diversifying , the largely Republican legislature is fighting to solidify and unify its presence in the Legislature and Senate by an unfair redistricting process, in effect minimizing the chances of Democratic and ethnically diverse candidates from having a fair chance at competing.
Redistricting has always been a sore spot in Texas, especially as Republicans have continued to make headway in elections against Democratic candidates, including incumbents. A news report by the Texas Tribune explains that while the issue has been temporarily resolved, the fact that this resolution led to a stronger suit for several Democratic candidates in the upcoming 2012 elections, has led Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot to appeal to the Supreme Court on behalf of Gov. Perry to repeal the decision. The case is currently being reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington. As Michelle Lee points out in her article, this is primarily a power struggle. Recent changes to population demographics have led the Democratic party to gain a small advantage in some areas, the GOP won’t stand for this encroachment on their power. The federal judges that created the new, possibly temporary, redistricting plan have argued that their map represents the “interest of the collective public good, as opposed to the interests of any political party or particular group of people.” Seeing as the population of Hispanics in Texas has grown by 2.8 million, and African Americans by 522, 570 in Texas over the past decade, as compared to a growth of only 465,000 for Anglos, and knowing that statistically the Hispanic and African American populations have generally been known to vote more often for Democratic candidates than Republican, I feel that the map that has been redrawn, providing some advantage to Democrats in certain areas, can only be fair and I would urge the Supreme Court to uphold a unbiased decision by federal judges, as opposed to a map drawn up by Texas GOP politicians who cannot help but be biased in their hopes for redistricting and consolidation of their power.
