Trouble in Texas: Redistricting Map Taken to Court
Republican lawmakers in Texas have found themselves in a lawsuit with civil rights organizations to contest the newly released district map that is believed to be the product of racially motivated gerrymandering. After convening for the third special session this year, a Republican controlled redistricting committee produced a map that is accused of misrepresenting the pattern of growth in the state within the last decade.
As national and state elections approach, the results of these elections will reflect the demographic growth in Texas, maybe… This is because the state of Texas is now carved into a series of misshapen districts, that reflect an overwhelmingly red state in contrast to the newest census, “People of color accounted for 95% of the state’s population boom over the last decade” Dallas News says.
If you’re like most of America, you would automatically assume Texas a red state but recent trends in growth suggest that Texas can very well become a battleground state in the years to come, that’s unless Republican lawmakers have anything to do with it of course.
Under the new state district map, the minority 40% is projected to have the most voting power. Progresstexas.org says, “This means that 40% of Texans have almost twice as much voting power as other residents.”
The origins of the United States are deep rooted in the division of political parties that held disagreements on how the Country should operate, and the values that would be instituted. Conservatism is described as “The holding of political views that favor free enterprise, private ownership, and socially traditional ideas”, however the social climate during the civil rights era began a racial division within political parties. Times.com describes the origin of the political divide as, “White voters in the South who were opposed to civil rights gains for people who were not white responded in droves to subtly and overtly racist appeals to move from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party”. Of course, political affiliation has nothing to do with race or ethnicity, but it must be considered when roughly 89% of the GOP identify as non-hispanic white.
The recent redistricting map is not the first effort made this year by Republican legislators to change the voting systems in Texas. After the 2020 Presidential election former President Donald Trump insisted that Republican votes were stolen and the election yielded unfair results. Soon after, Senate Bill 7 was proposed by GOP legislators and drew controversy because it proposed obstacles such as limited voting hours, limited mail in ballots, and severely limiting voting options. This resulted in Texas Democrats fleeing to Washington, DC to break quorum in order to block the bill. Because of similar bills in Republican controlled states, legislators on a federal level are now working to pass “The John Lewis Voters Rights Act” legislation to ensure fair elections by protecting the rights of marginalized voters.
The course of the lawsuits filed against the Redistricting maps are still in progress “Yet in every decade since then, federal judges have ruled at least once that the state violated federal protections for voters in redistricting” says Texastribune.org
For whatever the motive being that same year, Texas lawmakers had quietly passed a new law that allows legislators and staff to withhold all records related to redistricting from the public. “This session, Republican Todd Hunter, the chair of the Texas House Redistricting Committee, secretly hired a GOP operative who played a key role in 2010 with the Wisconsin Republicans’ redistricting. The operative held meetings with the entire Republican assembly — and no Democrats — and required members to sign confidentiality agreements” reports texasobserver.org. As Texas grows and expands, party lines seem to deepen and the drama at the Capital thickens while right and left wing leaders battle for Texas territory.
