special session

Of course the redistricting lawsuit trial will be delayed

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The legal fight over the shape of Texas political representation for the next decade won’t be decided until next year after a federal panel agreed Tuesday to delay a trial over new political maps.

The federal three-judge panel hearing the case pushed the start of the trial, which was originally scheduled for Sept. 28, following a flurry of disputes over discovery that left both the state and the various plaintiff groups questioning whether they’d have enough time to prepare to make their cases in a federal court in El Paso.

The court said it would announce a new trial at a later time.

The maps passed by the Legislature in 2021 have already gone into effect and are being used for the first time in this year’s elections, but the litigation could decide whether those maps need to be changed to ensure that voters of color have a fair say in choosing their representatives in elections for years to come.

The state faces a broad catalog of challenges to its four political maps, including its congressional and statehouse maps, that could affect a litany of districts. The legal claims, stemming from nearly a dozen consolidated lawsuits, include allegations of intentional discrimination, vote dilution and racial gerrymandering. The Republican-drawn maps largely serve to bolster the party’s dominance, giving white voters greater control of political districts throughout the state.

At issue in the delay were ongoing fights to compel Gov. Greg Abbott, the Texas attorney general’s office and other Republican elected officials to turn over thousands of documents that the state has been fighting to keep concealed. With less than a month until the scheduled start of the trial, the state and the plaintiffs groups were also jostling over various depositions in which state lawmakers relied on asserting legislative privilege to avoid divulging information on how the maps were drafted.

Redistricting cases are complex, with plaintiffs carrying the burden of proving wrongdoing by the state. The release of the disputed documents, the plaintiffs argued, could reveal new facts that could require additional depositions.

“Were the September 28 trial setting to hold, the Court could rule in advance of the upcoming legislative session. This would have been a clear benefit to all parties. But a ruling on only partial evidence does justice for none,” some of the plaintiffs wrote in a joint advisory filed with the court last week.

But the delay is not without risk.

This is the joint lawsuit with multiple plaintiffs; the Justice Department lawsuit, which survived a motion to dismiss in June, is being heard separately. The plaintiffs in this lawsuit scored a couple of wins recently relating to documents that must be disclosed to them. Those rulings obviously weren’t the end of the dispute, and so we have delays. The risk mentioned is that a final ruling would not be made in time for the Lege to make any required adjustments to the maps for the 2024 election. Remember, unless the primaries get moved back, which would affect the Presidential races, we need maps by October or so, to accommodate filing season and any updates that county election officials need to make. That’s not a lot of time. We’ll see when the new trial date is scheduled, but keep that time frame in mind. Unless we want to wait until 2026 – which, as we know from previous decades’ experience, is hardly out of the norm – the clock is very much ticking.

Abbott weasels on raising the minimum age to buy an assault weapon

Sep 2nd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Typical.

Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday that it would be unconstitutional to increase the minimum age to buy assault-style rifles from 18 to 21 years old — a key proposal Uvalde parents have called for after an 18-year-old gunned down their children’s school in May.

“It is clear that the gun control law that they are seeking in Uvalde — as much as they may want it — has already been ruled as unconstitutional,” Abbott said at a reelection campaign event in Allen.

The gunman in Uvalde bought two AR-15-style rifles days after he turned 18, the legal purchasing age in Texas, and used those weapons to kill 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary.

In the aftermath of the shooting, Texas Senate Democrats have asked for a special legislative session to increase the minimum age to purchase a semi-automatic rifle. Families of Uvalde victims and survivors also have pushed for a three-year increase to the legal purchasing age.

[…]

In the days after the shooting in Uvalde, Abbott was asked if he would consider banning assault-style weapons for 18-year-olds. The governor at the time appeared hesitant.

“Ever since Texas has been a state, an 18-year-old has had the ability to buy a long gun, a rifle. Since that time, it seems like it’s only been in the past decade or two that we’ve had school shootings. For a century and a half, 18-year-olds could buy rifles and we didn’t have school shootings. But we do,” Abbott said. “Maybe we’re focusing our attention on the wrong thing.”

Abbott that day was immediately interrupted by state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio, who said, “Your own colleagues are telling me, calling me and telling me an 18-year-old shouldn’t have a gun. This is enough. Call us back, man.”

“Simply doing nothing is about as evil as it comes,” Gutierrez later said in June.

See here for the ruling Abbott refers to. I’ll get to the legal stuff in a minute, but first as you might imagine, not everyone cared for this response.

A video of Abbott making the claim circulated on social media, drawing reactions from Texas leaders and Uvalde parents. Brett Cross, father 8-year-old victim Uziyah Garcia’s father, tweeted a video in response to Abbott, noting the “parents matter” signs.

“What parents are you referring to actually? Because it’s not us in Uvalde,” Cross said. Cross also claimed that during a conversation he had in person with Abbott, the governor shut down any talks about changing gun laws because it wouldn’t have changed anything. Abbott allegedly pointed to the 17-year-old gunman from the Santa Fe High School shooting in 2018, Cross said.

“Except it would have,” Cross said. “You see that piece of s–t that murdered our children legally bought that damn gun. You could do something about it. You’re just too chicken s–t to do it. So don’t sit there and act like you’re for the people, that you’re for the parents, that you’re for the children, because you don’t give a damn.”

Cross continued: “But I implore you, make a liar out of me. Call a special session. Or don’t and prove me right. The choice is yours buddy.”

Abbott’s office did not immediately on Wednesday return a request for comment on his conversation with Cross.

The video also drew reactions from other Texas leaders. Austin Mayor Steve Adler tweeted in response: “Seven states have raised the minimum age to 21. It is possible.”

Abbott’s Democratic gubernatorial opponent Beto O’Rourke denied the governor’s claim, writing on Twitter: “Yes, it is. And thanks to the leadership of the families in Uvalde, we are going to do it.”

David Hogg, gun control activist and survivor of the Stoneman Douglass High School shooting tweeted: “Bulls–t we did it in Florida.”

The most obvious thing to point out here is that this ruling can be, and should be appealed. Indeed, the judge in question put his ruling on hold for 30 days pending appeal. That stay can be extended by the appeals court or SCOTUS, and at this point we don’t know what a final ruling will be. That ruling was about carrying handguns, and the demand here is about buying assault weapons, so even if the ruling in this case is eventually upheld, it doesn’t mean that a law raising the age to 21 for assault weapons would be illegal under it. Actual legal experts agree with me on these points!

At least seven states — California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, New York, Vermont and Washington — have passed legislation raising the legal purchase age for sales of long guns, and several are still cases regarding those laws are winding their way through the courts.

“It’s an unsettled question whether states can restrict guns to people under 21,” said Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor who studies gun policy. “There are court cases going both ways … This is one of many issues the Supreme Court is going to have to take up in the coming years.”

[…]

David Pucino, deputy chief counsel for the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said there is a well-grounded case to be made that age restrictions are lawful and in keeping with historical laws.

“There is really strong law and strong history to support the principle that you can have these restrictions,” Pucino said. “Historically, the age of 21 was the age of majority (legal adulthood); it’s only a far more recent development that it’s been lowered to the age of 18.”

Pucino added that the cases to which Abbott refers had to do with carrying of handguns, not purchasing of assault weapons.

“An important distinction is that handguns are recognized by the Supreme Court as being the quintessential weapon for self-defense, and that is absolutely not the case with assault weapons,” Pucino said. “These rifles in particular have offensive capabilities, and that’s their distinguishing feature is the fact that they can be used to inflict an incredible and horrifying amount of damage in a very short period of time.”

Greg Abbott is a lawyer and he knows these things perfectly well. He just doesn’t want to deal with them, and so he dodges the question. Oh, and did I mention that the state of Texas is the defendant in that handgun lawsuit? The state of Texas is the party that would be making the appeal of that ruling. If it chooses to, of course, which is also a thing Greg Abbott has a say in. Don’t believe his “we can’t do anything” baloney.

Redistricting plaintiffs get a win on discovery

Aug 2nd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

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Every little bit helps.

A federal judge on Monday issued a wide-ranging discovery order requiring Texas state lawmakers to turn over documents related to the state’s congressional redistricting plans.

The underlying lawsuit, filed by the League of United Latin American Citizens and several other civil rights groups, is part of a broad effort to correct what critics say is voter intimidation and discrimination in Texas heading into the 2022 midterm elections.

[…]

Like the separate lawsuit over Texas election laws, this redistricting case has continued to swell since its initial filing, with six other lawsuits consolidated into the legal fight. Days after the case was filed, the Fifth Circuit appointed a three-judge panel to oversee the increasingly complex case.

In November, the Justice Department also joined those suing state officials. It was doing so, the federal government said, because Texas redistricting plans had raised “important questions” about possible violations of the Voting Rights Act.

Since then, the case has largely hinged on issues of discovery. Texas lawmakers have battled against subpoenas, arguing that much of their work on redistricting was privileged information. They filed hundreds of pages of court documents detailing information they do not think they should have to turn over, including what they’ve described as “confidential communications” reflecting “thoughts, opinions and mental impressions.”

The Department of Justice, meanwhile, has continued its efforts to enforce subpoenas. The feds argue Texas officials have “inappropriately” claimed attorney-client privilege, refused to turn over documents from decades ago and “advanced an overbroad conception” of legislative privilege that has withheld “even communications with members of the public.” As a result, they say, lawmakers have disclosed “merely one-third” of the documents requested in subpoenas.

In his order on Monday, U.S. District Court Judge David Guaderrama, an Obama appointee, agreed with arguments from the DOJ and the civil rights groups. He found that Texas lawmakers were using overly broad theories of legislative privilege and could not “cloak conversations with executive-branch officials, lobbyists, and other interested outsiders.”

Guaderrama ruled the factors in this case weighed in favor of granting discovery requests. He cited the “seriousness of the litigation and the issues involved,” including allegations of lawbreaking and “intentional discrimination” against minority voters.

While Texas lawmakers asserted attorney-client privilege, the judge ruled they could not simply decline to release any documents referencing legal analysis, including scheduling calendars and communications with outside firms involved in redistricting. These documents are not “categorically privileged,” he wrote.

In the end, Guaderrama ordered Texas lawmakers to turn over a wide array of documents relating to redistricting, including “talking points” defending the maps. For any documents that contained “bona fide legal advice” or “privileged material,” Guaderrama ordered lawmakers to produce redacted versions.

About two months ago, the plaintiffs scored a different win in that three Republican legislators who had tried to avoid having to sit for depositions failed to get a lower court ruling against them overturned. If this ruling stands – always a dicey proposal when the Fifth Circuit is involved – then what the plaintiffs will gain is a lot of insight into what the legislators and their staff and advisors were saying to each other at the time. The experience from previous rounds of redistricting litigation is that there will be some good stuff there for the plaintiffs. Which still might not matter in the end, since SCOTUS has made its preferences very clear, but as I said in that last post, you have to start somewhere. Link via Reform Austin.

Uvalde school board asks for a special session on guns

Jul 27th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

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They’re not going to get it, just like everyone else who has asked that Greg Abbott Do Something about them.

The Uvalde school board is formally urging Gov. Greg Abbott to call state lawmakers back to Austin so they can raise the legal age to buy assault rifles from 18 to 21, more than two months after a gunman used such a weapon to kill 19 elementary school students and two teachers days after he turned 18.

Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District trustees approved the largely symbolic resolution in a unanimous vote on the same night they voted to delay the start of the school year. Trustees moved the first day of school from Aug. 15 to Sept. 6 so that more security improvements can be made to campuses and district staffers can receive trauma-informed training.

Uvalde County commissioners have also asked Abbott, who in June asked the Texas Legislature to form special committees to make recommendations in the aftermath of the shooting, to call a special session to increase the legal age to buy an assault rifle. Democrats have made similar calls since the May 24 shooting at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary. The governor is the only Texas official with the power to call special legislative sessions.

In an emailed response to The Texas Tribune, a spokesperson from Abbott’s office said the governor “has taken immediate action to address all aspects” of the massacre in Uvalde.

“As Governor Abbott has said from day one, all options remain on the table as he continues working with state and local leaders to prevent future tragedies and deploy all available resources to support the Uvalde community as they heal,” the spokesperson said. “More announcements are expected in the coming days and weeks as the legislature deliberates proposed solutions.”

The vote on both items comes more than a week after a Texas House report detailed a series of “systemic failures” that allowed for the gunman to enter Robb Elementary in Uvalde and remain inside two adjoined classrooms for more than 73 minutes before law enforcement confronted him.

See here for some background. Two things to note here. One is that Abbott’s canned response every time someone asks him to Do Something to prevent teenagers from legally buying high-powered automatic weapons that they use to kill children is basically “I already did, so leave me alone”. He doesn’t want to take action, or to commit to something that might lead to action, so he deflects and hopes no one notices.

Two, the otherwise pretty good House report did not have any specific policy recommendations, such as raising the minimum age for purchasing the aforementioned weapons to 21. One assumes they got some sense of direction if not from Abbott himself then from the official Republican position, which is almost certainly farther to the right than the consensus of the individual members. I mean, I wouldn’t expect there to be anything like a majority within the GOP caucus for raising the age to 21, but I would expect there to be more than enough support when combined with Dems to pass such a bill in the House. I’d also expect that to have at least plurality support among self-identified Republicans, though likely not among Republican primary voters. Which in the end is the group that matters here. The obvious answer, if this is what one wants, is to elect enough Dems to make it happen, at least in the House. I’d still expect it to die in the Senate, but at least we’d have it all on record.

One more thing:

At a school board meeting last week, Uvalde residents called for district officials to fire district police Chief Pete Arredondo, who was among the first officers to arrive at the school the day of the shooting. School board members were scheduled to discuss that Saturday, but the school district postponed the meeting at the request of the police chief’s lawyer.

See here and here for the background. I was hoping to see an update on when this might happen, but not yet. I’ll keep watching.

We’re still not going to get a special session for gun safety legislation

Jun 24th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

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But I still appreciate the effort. Someone has to do it.

With Texas schools restarting classes in less than two months, Texas Senate Democrats renewed calls Monday for Gov. Greg Abbott to bring lawmakers back to Austin this summer to enact legislation that might prevent another mass shooting like the one at a Uvalde elementary school that killed 19 students and two teachers last month.

The senators said if lawmakers reconvene for a special session, they would support proposals like raising the age to legally own an assault weapon from 18 to 21, creating red flag laws for gun purchases, instituting a 72-hour “cooling off” period and regulating the private sale of firearms.

But first there has to be a debate, and a vote, to let Texans know where their elected officials stand on how to respond to the Uvalde shooting, said state Sen. John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat who chairs the Senate Criminal Justice Committee and was unsuccessful in passing his red flag legislation last session.

“The people are urging us to take action, but first we have to let them know we’re listening to them,” he said. “We’ve heard the public, we want to represent them, but we have to have a session to do that.”

The Senators have been calling for a special session for many weeks following the Uvalde massacre. They are now joined by multiple Mayors.

San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg is part of a bipartisan group of 13 Texas mayors who sent a letter demanding Texas Gov. Greg Abbott call a special legislative session to address gun violence in the wake of the Uvalde school shooting.

Abbott, a Republican up for reelection in the fall, has asked state lawmakers to organize committees to look into school safety following the massacre, which killed 19 students and two teachers. However, he’s balked at calling a special session and has avoided discussion of new firearms laws — something that would anger the powerful gun lobby.

The letter calls on Abbott to enact reforms the mayors say are backed by the majority of Texans and could prevent future mass shootings.

“We represent a continuum of political ideology and have come together because we know most Texans have a strong desire for common sense reform to protect our children,” they said. “As mayors, we believe the legislature and executive leaders can come together to find the right solutions for Texas.”

The letter also asks Abbott to place the following reforms on the legislative agenda.

Requiring universal background checks for gun purchases.

Increasing the age to purchase assault weapons in Texas to 21.

Passing “red flag” laws to identify threats before shootings.

Boosting mental health support funding.

Training and properly equipping school safety officers.

Texas isn’t among the 19 U.S. states to enact “red flag” laws, which prevent people at risk of harming themselves or others from purchasing firearms.

In addition to Nirenberg, the letter is signed by Austin Mayor Steve Adler, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson and Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker, among others.

As always, I appreciate the effort. And also as always, I fully expect Greg Abbott to cover his ears and start singing “Baby Shark” or whatever it is he does to self-soothe these days, because it ain’t gonna happen. You probably didn’t pay much attention to the fascistic shitshow known as the Texas Republican Convention from last week, but Greg Abbott did. That’s who he’s listening to (and deathly afraid of), not a bunch of Democrats and mayors. The Chron and the Dallas Observer have more.

Two redistricting lawsuit updates

Jun 13th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

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Legislators involved in the most recent redistricting effort can be made to sit for depositions.

The Supreme Court refused Tuesday to block the deposition of Texas lawmakers in redistricting suits.

Mum as to whether there were any dissents, the order from the justices keeps in place a lower court ruling that will force Republican lawmakers to appear for depositions in suits claiming that Texas’ redistricting plans are discriminatory. Per their custom, the justices also did not offer any explanation for their ruling.

The United States subpoenaed three Texas lawmakers at the beginning of the month to testify in a challenge to the state’s 2021 congressional and state House redistricting plans. The Department of Justice and voting rights groups claim the new maps violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by intentionally discriminating against minority voters in West Texas and the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Representatives Ryan Guillen, Brooks Landgraf and John Lujan tried to limit their testimony to matters in the public record, but a federal judge denied their motion and their attempt to block the testimony altogether. Likewise the Fifth Circuit refused to enter a stay pending appeal that would block their testimony.

In their application to the high court, Texas lawmakers claim they have the privilege and immunity to avoid testifying in the suits.

“The legislators’ depositions will probe the very innerworkings of the legislative process, examining the legislators’ thoughts, impressions, and motivations for their legislative acts,” wrote Taylor A.R. Meehan, an attorney with Consovoy McCarthy representing the lawmakers.

He also warned that lawmakers would have to answer questions in full the “proverbial ‘cat is out of the bag.’ And the twin safeguards of legislative immunity and privilege — older than the country itself — are no safeguards at all.”

The Justice Department said the depositions were routine.

“Courts, including this Court, often rely on such testimony both in assessing the motive and justification for districting choices and in considering the ‘totality of circumstances’ relevant to minority voters’ electoral opportunities, as the VRA directs,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in the government’s opposition brief.

The government notes that Lujan has a particularly weak claim to legislative privilege since he was not in the Legislature when the redistricting plans were passed.

“Representative John Lujan, does not have even an arguable claim of legislative privilege with respect to the challenged districting plans because he was not in the legislature when the plans were passed — a critical fact that applicants do not mention,” Prelogar wrote.

This is from the LULAC lawsuit, which is now consolidated with most of the other federal lawsuits. The order is from a couple of weeks ago, as the depositions were set to begin the week of May 24. SCOTUS just never took up the defendants’ motion, so they did not get an order to protect them from being deposed. This is not going to change the overall trajectory of the litigation, but it ought to lead to some interesting facts for the eventual hearings. Lujan as noted was not a legislator when the maps were passed in the special session, so who knows what he thinks he has to keep quiet about, while Guillen was still a Democrat when this was all happening. Should make for some fun questions, if nothing else.

The other federal lawsuit, which was not combined with the LULAC et al complaint, is the one filed by the Justice Department. That one survived a motion to dismiss:

A federal judge has ruled that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland can proceed with voting and civil rights claims against Texas over a state law passed last year to address purported voter fraud.

State officials had asked U.S. District Court Judge Xavier Rodriguez to dismiss the case, arguing that federal officials did not have standing to sue them. They argued that local election officials — not state ones — were charged with implementing the new law.

The George W. Bush appointee disagreed in an order Tuesday, finding the U.S. attorney general has “broad constitutional power to protect the right to vote” and is “congressionally authorized” to go after voting rights violations.

The federal government had a “significant stake” in protecting “the general welfare of its citizenry,” Rodriguez wrote. He found the U.S. government had plausibly alleged that Texas law would “disenfranchise eligible Texas citizens who seek to exercise their vote,” including those with disabilities, limited knowledge of English and “members of the military deployed away from home.”

[…]

In November, the U.S. attorney general’s office intervened, expressing an interest the [LULAC et al consolidated] case and urging Rodriguez not to dismiss the claims. Voting lawsuits brought by private groups were necessary, the filing argued, due to the “limited federal resources available for Voting Rights Act enforcement” and because states with histories of voter restrictions no longer had to seek federal preclearance for voting changes following the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder.

Later that month, the AG’s office also filed suit against the Lone Star State. In a strongly worded complaint, federal officials argued that Texas already had some of the “strictest [voting] limitations in the nation” and that SB1 would “impermissibly” restrict and disenfranchise voters.

Texas’s “history of official voting-related discrimination against its disfavored citizens is longstanding and well-documented,” the complaint said. “Federal intervention has been necessary to eliminate numerous devices intentionally used to restrict minority voting in Texas.”

This lengthy and complex legal battle, involving a variety of parties, led up to Tuesday’s order. Over the months, Texas officials have tried numerous avenues to dismiss the case.

Among other things, state officials zeroed in on the state’s new voter ID and mail-in ballot requirements. Because the state allows voters to “cure” their ballots, they argued, the law did not deny the right to vote.

Rodriguez rejected this argument and others, writing that a voter’s opportunity to cure their ballot “does not necessarily mean” that SB 1 did not violate the Civil Rights Act. The law does not allow state officials to “initially deny the right to vote…as long as they institute cure processes,” he wrote. Instead, it bars these actions altogether.

He also found that, while local elections officials may be in charge of implementing the law, SB 1 was in fact “traceable” to state officials, and therefore they could be sued. Since the law has so far been in effect for the state’s primary elections, the U.S. government had also alleged an injury, he found.

Rather than issuing an injunction preventing enforcement of parts of SB 1, Rodriguez’s order instead simply allows the U.S. government to continue with its lawsuit. It remains to be seen how the case will play out, including whether controversial aspects of SB 1 will remain in effect for the 2022 midterm elections later this year.

There’s a long road ahead for this litigation, and at the end awaits a US Supreme Court that is extremely hostile to voting rights. But you have to start somewhere, and who knows, maybe the landscape will change by that time.

The very least Greg Abbott could do

Jun 3rd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

You can always count on him for that.

Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday called on the Texas Legislature to form special committees to make legislative recommendations in response to the Uvalde school shooting.

In a letter to House Speaker Dade Phelan and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the Senate’s presiding officer, Abbott told his fellow Republicans that the state “must reassess the twin issues of school safety and mass violence.” He said the committee process should start “immediately” and outlined five topics he would like the committees to take up.

Notably, the topics include “firearm safety.” Abbott last week essentially ruled out gun restrictions as a response to the massacre, in which a gunman killed 19 students and two adults last week at Robb Elementary School. He focused his attention on mental health care and school security in his public comments.

The other topics Abbott charged leadership with making recommendations on were school safety, mental health, social media and police training.

Phelan responded to Abbott’s call by saying in a statement that “conversations about the issues outlined by Gov. Abbott are already underway in the Texas House and will continue to be a top priority in the months leading up to the next school year and the legislative session.” He added that the House “will get to work immediately.”

[…]

Abbott’s critics quickly argued that the time for committees has passed. They pointed out that the Legislature also formed special committees after mass shootings in 2019, and those discussions did not prevent the Uvalde school shooting from happening.

Abbott’s Democratic challenger for reelection, Beto O’Rourke, panned Abbott’s push for legislative committees.

“Anyone can call for a committee. Only a governor can call a special session,” O’Rourke tweeted. “Do your job.”

The 2019 committees on gun violence followed the anti-Hispanic massacre at a Walmart in El Paso. A Democratic state senator from the area, César Blanco, sent Abbott a letter Wednesday saying that he appreciated the call for committees since the Uvalde shooting but noted “we have solutions ready now.” He cited nine bills he filed in the first session after the Walmart shooting, including a proposal to extend background checks to cover private gun sales. While Patrick initially showed interest in that idea — even suggesting he would stand up to the National Rifle Association to pass it — it was a short-lived crusade and the legislation never got a Senate committee hearing.

Those committees will also be stacked with pro-gun legislators, so adjust your already dismally low expectations accordingly. Despite all this, there’s a call for a special session, mostly from Dems, which I don’t expect to happen since Abbott clearly doesn’t want it to happen, no matter his “haven’t ruled it out” rhetoric. The sound you hear is Greg Abbott quietly waiting for this all to blow over.

I’m just going to leave this here:

.
For those asking: The governor’s request for special committees *isn’t* a special session or anything like it. It may be less than his response to Santa Fe. Back then he formed roundtables, which he can do. Now he asks the House & Senate to form committees, which only they can do

— Scott Braddock (@scottbraddock) 2:22 PM – 1 June 2022

Ask not what your Governor can do for you. Ask what your Governor can ask other people to do for him so he doesn’t have to do anything himself. The Current has more.

Justice Department to review what happened with Uvalde police

May 30th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

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Okay.

The U.S. Department of Justice will review the law enforcement’s response to the Uvalde school massacre as local police face intense scrutiny for not acting quickly enough to confront the shooter.

“The goal of the review is to provide an independent account of law enforcement actions and responses that day, and to identify lessons learned and best practices to help first responders prepare for and respond to active shooter events,” Anthony Coley, a spokesperson for the U.S. Justice Department, wrote in a statement Sunday.

Uvalde mayor Don McLaughlin requested the Justice Department investigation, Coley said.

Police officers made a crucial error in waiting to stop the 18-year-old gunman rampaging at Robb Elementary School because the school district’s chief of police wanted to wait for backup and equipment, said Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety. Meanwhile, students were still trapped inside with the gunman, repeatedly calling 911 for help.

By the time a specialized team of federal officers arrived and entered the school, more than an hour had passed since the shooter had arrived at the school, McCraw said.

“From the benefit of hindsight, where I’m sitting now, of course it was not the right decision,” McCraw said. “It was the wrong decision, period. There’s no excuse for that.”

Since the shooting, state law enforcement officials have given vague and conflicting answers on what exactly happened after the gunman arrived at the school. In the days after the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, officials with the Texas Department of Public Safety said the shooter was met by a police officer employed by the school district — and gave conflicting accounts about whether the officer fired at the gunman.

See here for some background. We may at least get some more honest and accurate answers about what happened and why the Uvalde police acted as they did. That’s nice, but I doubt it moves the ball forward for anything else. I’m always in favor of getting the facts right, I’m just trying to maintain perspective on this. It’s good on its own terms, just don’t expect more.

For example:

The Texas Senate Democratic Caucus is urging Gov. Greg Abbott to call an emergency special legislative session to consider a variety of gun restrictions and safety measures in the wake of a mass school shooting in Uvalde that left 19 children and two adults dead this week.

In a letter released Saturday morning, all 13 Senate Democrats demanded lawmakers pass legislation that raises the minimum age to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21 years old. The Uvalde gunman was 18 and had purchased two AR-style rifles which he used in the attack.

The caucus is also calling for universal background checks for all firearm sales, “red flag” laws that allow a judge to temporarily remove firearms from people who are considered an imminent threat to themselves or others, a “cooling off period” for the purchase of a firearm and regulations on high capacity magazines for citizens.

[…]

Such laws are unlikely to gain traction in the Republican-controlled Legislature, which has a track record of favoring legislation that loosens gun restrictions. Only the governor has the power to call lawmakers back into a special session for emergency work.

Asked about a special session at a Friday press conference in Uvalde, Abbott said “all options are on the table” adding that he believed laws would ultimately be passed to address this week’s horrors. However, he suggested laws would be more tailored toward addressing mental health, rather than gun control.

“You can expect robust discussion and my hope is laws are passed, that I will sign, addressing health care in this state,” he said, “That status quo is unacceptable. This crime is unacceptable. We’re not going to be here and do nothing about it.”

Making things worse is always an option. The palaver about “addressing mental health” is as useless and empty as “thoughts and prayers”, since Abbott has said the same thing after each of the previous two mass shootings at schools that have happened during his reign, and all he has done in reality is cut funding for mental health care. Also, too, for the 597th time, the single biggest and best thing the state could do to improve mental health care in Texas is expand Medicaid, and we all know that ain’t happening as long as Abbott and his minions are in charge. Texas Public Radio has more.

SCOTx hearing on state redistricting lawsuits

Mar 24th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

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The state lawsuits over the “county line rule” in Cameron County and the Eckhardt/Gutierrez “decennial redistricting only in a regular session” contention had a hearing before the State Supreme Court over whether these suits can be heard in state district court.

Attorneys representing a group of Democratic state lawmakers faced off Wednesday with the state attorney general’s office in the latest partisan battle over redrawn political maps passed by the Texas Legislature in 2021.

The arguments before the Texas Supreme Court were part of a case filed against Gov. Greg Abbott by the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, or MALC, that allege Texas Republicans violated the Texas Constitution when they redrew political boundaries after the 2020 U.S. Census.

Attorneys for MALC and what are collectively called the Gutierrez plaintiffs — state Sens. Roland Gutierrez and Sarah Eckhardt, House District 37 candidate Ruben Cortez, and the Tejano Democrats — alleged in state court that the Texas Legislature violated what is known as the “county line rule” when political maps were redrawn in 2021. That rule requires counties with sufficient populations to be kept whole during the process.

They argue the Legislature violated that rule when it passed House Bill 1, the lower chamber’s redistricting bill, because it split the Cameron County line twice when maps were redrawn. It did so by including districts that went in two different directions into two counties to create part of separate House districts, according to a court filing.

The arguments Wednesday centered on whether the courts are a proper venue for the debate, something the state argued against. In December, a three-judge panel denied a request by the attorney general’s office to dismiss the case based on that argument.

“This court has repeatedly recognized that redistricting is a uniquely legislative task,” said Lanora Pettit, an attorney with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office. Pettit said that a previous ruling by the court stated it could only intervene in “exigent circumstances” but the current lawsuit didn’t qualify.

“This is not such a circumstance,” she said. “Plaintiffs who lack standing seek an order that is a function of the [Texas] Constitution.”

Justice Jeff Boyd said the broad argument seemed “hard to swallow.”

“Challenging new maps on these grounds raises a very important constitutional issue and I hear the state arguing ‘Yeah. Well, so sorry. There is nobody that gets to raise that,” he said.

Later attorney Wallace Jefferson, a former Republican state supreme court chief justice, said that if the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue the state on the issue of redistricting, it would essentially mean that nobody could challenge perceived violations of the Texas Constitution.

“If these voters and these candidates lack standing, no one could ever sue to enforce mandatory provisions of the Texas Constitution,” he said.

See here and here for the background. I had thought at one point that these lawsuits might have affected the primaries this year, but that was not to be. If the plaintiffs prevail, the first election in which we’d see the effects would be 2024, or possibly later depending on how the appeals go. I am of course rooting for the plaintiffs here, but the state’s argument here really does seem very broad. Doesn’t mean they won’t win anyway, but it would be a significant matter if they did, at least on this point. I hope that SCOTx decides to let the issue play out in court before they have to step in, but you never know.

Here’s a Twitter thread from MALC, one of the plaintiffs, about the arguments. A brief interview with MALC attorney Joaquin Gonzalez is in the Texas Signal, and you can find relevant case documents at Democracy Docket. KVUE has more on this part of the case.

As for the Eckhardt/Gutierrez challenge, it’s a bit confusing.

Texas lawmakers are bound by state law to open a fresh round of redistricting in 2023, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office asserted Tuesday in a Texas Supreme Court hearing.

The assertion came from an appellate attorney with Paxton’s office during a hearing related to multiple lawsuits challenging district maps approved during a special session last year.

Lanora Pettit, Texas’ principal deputy solicitor general, argued that the lawsuits were moot, as plaintiffs including Democratic state Sens. Sarah Eckhardt and Roland Gutierrez as well as the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, are asking for the court to order the Legislature to take up redistricting next year.

“The state takes the position that the Legislature is required to redistrict again in January of 2023 and as a result, because (the plaintiffs) are not seeking to change the outcome — the map — for this election cycle, then whatever this court would be to order would not have an effect on a real world election,” Pettit said.

Democrats are also arguing that the Legislature needs to take up redistricting again in 2023, but believe that a court needs to order it or else Republicans, who led the effort and created a highly favorable map for their party, would not do it otherwise.

The main claims Democrats have in this case revolve around two provisions in state law.

The suit from Eckhardt and Gutierrez points to a provision in the Texas Constitution that requires redistricting to occur during the first regular session of the Legislature following the release of the once-a-decade census.

Because of COVID-19 delays, census redistricting numbers were not released until after 2021′s regular legislative session was adjourned. The process instead took place during a special session.

I guess it comes down to whether the Lege has to redistrict, which would presumably be on terms more favorable to at least some Democrats, or it gets to redistrict, in which case the Republicans get to choose. I’d rather not find out what that looks like. If the suits survive the effort to dismiss them, they will go back before that three-judge panel that first heard arguments in December.

Hey, remember when disability rights advocates were worried about the voter suppression bill?

Feb 21st, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

8 comments

They were right to be worried. Because of course they were.

As polls opened up for early voting this week, disability advocates say they still do not have adequate guidance from the state about new voter assistance rules and worry that the lack of clarity on what constitutes a violation might dissuade people who provide assistance services from helping voters with disabilities.

Republicans enacted restrictions last year on the state’s voting process, including rules on how Texans can assist voters when casting ballots. Texans assisting other voters must now fill out paperwork disclosing their relationship, indicate whether compensation was provided and recite an expanded oath, now under the penalty of perjury, stating that they did not “pressure or coerce” the voter into choosing them for assistance.

Texans who offer or accept compensation for providing voter assistance would be in violation of the new rules, creating anxiety among those who assist people with disabilities as part of their job.

“There are voters with disabilities who use their personal aides or personal attendants to assist them in completing daily tasks, and voting is a daily task,” said Molly Broadway, a voting rights training specialist at Disability Rights Texas, adding that she has already received calls from assistants afraid of incurring criminal charges for activities that are usually part of their duties. “It’s a very present, very real need that exists.”

Texans who drive at least seven voters to the polls are also considered assistants and must comply with new rules on compensation. Broadway said she has heard concerns from nursing home employees who provide transportation to polling places.

The new legislation also limits any kind of voter assistance to “reading the ballot to the voter, directing the voter to read the ballot, marking the voter’s ballot, or directing the voter to mark the ballot.” But voters with intellectual and developmental disabilities might need additional help, such as gestures or reminders about how they had intended to vote, to get through the process, Broadway said.

Broadway has instructed those providing assistance to sign the expanded oath, inform poll workers about the help they’re providing to the voter and reach out to county election offices and request additional accommodations when necessary.

If an assistant appears to be breaching the new rules, poll watchers have been instructed to inform their county’s election administration office. Upon reviewing the case, election administrators may reach out to authorities to investigate the case.

If there’s evidence that an assistant was paid for their services, Potter County elections administrator Melynn Huntley said she would need to refer the case to the attorney general.

“We gather screenshots or copies of the actual papers that may have been signed or not signed, and then we submit them to the appropriate enforcement authority,” Huntley explained.

Brazoria County election director Lisa Mujica said her office has trained clerks around the new regulations for voter assistance. If an assistant appears to be violating the rules, clerks are instructed to step in and educate them about the limitations of their role.

But Chase Bearden, the deputy executive director at the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities, said that’s part of the problem: Inadequate state guidance has created confusion among voters and leaves the responsibility of determining what may constitute a violation to election workers.

“At the end of the day, we aren’t sure how this is going to play out,” Bearden said. “We’re kind of in the dark and are hoping that most election workers will be fair and want to make sure that people get the assistance they need.”

The Coalition of Texans with Disabilities, Disability Rights Texas and other disability rights groups have said they have received little guidance from the secretary of state, which oversees elections, about the steps voters with disabilities should take if they need assistance that conflicts with the regulations established in the new rules.

See here for the background; don’t be confused by the bill number in that post, it became SB1 in the subsequent special session where it ultimately passed. There is of course a lawsuit filed by disability rights activists (among others) against this law, but it has not advanced to the point where action could be taken. (More on that lawsuit here.) Of course these issues were raised at the time, and of course bill authors Briscoe Cain and Bryan Hughes ignored them, because why would they care? And now, if a confused or poorly trained election worker decides that someone’s health assistant is violating the law, the matter may wind up in Ken Paxton’s hands, and we know how fairly and compassionately he handles these matters. So yeah, this is all a giant bag of suck. And that was the point.

We will have a statewide special election in May

Feb 19th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Surprise!

Texas voters will decide whether to lower some property taxes that fund schools in a May 7 special election.

Two propositions will be on the statewide ballot. Gov. Greg Abbott officially set the upcoming election date Wednesday.

The first proposition would draw down property taxes for elderly and disabled Texans by reducing the amount they pay to public schools, which typically makes up most of a homeowner’s tax bill. The state would then cover that reduced revenue for school districts. The measure would cost the state more than $744 million from 2024 to 2026.

The second measure would raise Texas’ homestead exemption from $25,000 to $40,000 for school district property taxes, which would save the average homeowner about $176 on their annual property tax bill. If approved, this measure would cost the state $600 million annually. The state will use a $4.4 billion surplus to pay for the measure’s first-year cost, but as of October, it was unclear where future funding would come from.

Both measures passed during special legislative sessions last year with bipartisan support from lawmakers.

I have a vague memory of this from last summer, and I thought I wrote something about it at the time, but if I did I can’t find it. Go read the linked Trib story for the details. This will be on the May ballot because it happened too late to be on last year’s November ballot, when this sort of thing normally happens. Having it at that time almost certainly means there will be even lower turnout than the typical November-of-odd-year Constitutional amendment vote, but at least it means that the HCC special election will have some company. So mark your calendar, between this and the inevitable primary runoffs you now have two reasons to vote in May.

Supreme Court to hear whether state redistricting lawsuit can proceed

Jan 24th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

Here’s the update I’ve been waiting for. Not what I was hoping for, but it is what it is.

The state’s bid to toss a legal challenge arguing last year’s GOP-led redistricting effort violated the Texas Constitution is headed to the state Supreme Court, which accepted the case Friday.

The all-Republican Supreme Court set oral arguments on March 23, well after the March 1 primary election.

The Legislature’s GOP mapmakers last fall approved new political lines that could cement Republicans’ grip on power for the next decade and blunt the voting strength of nonwhite voters who fueled Texas’ population surge.

As federal lawsuits over the new maps pile up, some Democrats are focusing on fights in state court. In two combined cases, a group of mostly Democratic, Latino lawmakers from both chambers challenged the constitutionality of when and how Republicans drew the boundaries.

After two days of oral arguments in December, a three-judge state district court ruled against temporarily blocking the new legislative maps, but set a trial for January. Texas then appealed the court’s denial of its motions to dismiss the case, putting the trial on hold.

The lawmakers’ attorneys said they don’t seek to overturn the maps for the 2022 election cycle but argued for expedited resolution of the appeal “to allow sufficient time for the parties to litigate the merits before the 2023 legislative session.”

“For decades, MALC has defended the freedom to vote and equal access to the ballot box. We are not surprised that (Texas Attorney General) Ken Paxton would attempt to undermine our members and the millions of Texas voices they represent,” said state Rep. Rafael Anchia, chair of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, one of the challengers against the maps.

[…]

The consolidated case was assigned to a special three-judge panel of Democrat Karin Crump and Republicans Emily Miskel and Ken Wise. If the state Supreme Court affirms the lower court’s decision, “the parties need sufficient time to return to the special three-judge district court, obtain a final judgment, and complete any appeal from that judgment,” the challengers said in a filing.

See here for the previous update. I’ve been scouring the news for the past two weeks because I knew that proposed trial date was coming up. I had not seen an item about the state’s appeal, so the lack of news about the trial was confusing to me – was this really not being covered, or was there a delay of some kind. Turns out it was the latter. Maybe if I’d spent more time on Twitter I might have seen something to that effect, but too much time on Twitter is its own hazard. Point is, this litigation will not derail the March primaries. Like the litigation over Harris County Commissioners Court redistricting, it may eventually end with a ruling that will force a change to the new maps, but it cannot and will not affect this election.

Anyway, so SCOTx will decide whether to toss the two combined lawsuits or to allow the trial to proceed. Hopefully they will do this in a timely manner, so that we might have a resolution in time for the 2023 legislature to address any remaining questions. Which, let’s be clear, could be a double-edged sword, though at least on the county line question it’s more likely to be good for Democrats if the plaintiffs win and the districts in Cameron County need to be redrawn. And speaking of timing, SCOTx accepted this appeal on the same day that they also accepted the SB8 litigation from the Fifth Circuit. Thanks, I hate it.

One more thing, on a side note:

.
Situational awareness: A push to temporarily block the redraw of #SD10 is scheduled to be heard Tuesday in federal court. #txlege

— Sami Sparber (@samisparber) 11:24 AM – 21 January 2022

That’s the Sen. Powell lawsuit. So there is still one thing that could throw a kink into the March primaries. I’ll keep an eye on that.

On primarying the quorum breakers

Jan 16th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Of interest.

Working Families Party, a political party and relative newcomer to Texas politics that backs Democrats aligned with their platform, aims to spend in the ballpark of half a million dollars this cycle, WFP Texas Co-director Pedro Lira told the Signal.

Much of that money will go to door-to-door canvassing.

“At the end of the day, when you can really connect with people face to face, that’s really what motivates people to get out to vote,” Lira said. “We’re trying to build a real base of working class people. You can’t do that without involving those people.”

[…]

In partnership with CWA and Texas Organizing Project, WFP is also bankrolling “Texans for Better Dems,” a new political action committee that will primary Democrats in the state legislature who returned from Washington D.C. to restore quorum, a move that caused a rift in the state party and led to the creation of the Texas Progressive Caucus.

“We were incredibly proud of the Democrats who fled the state to deny Republicans quorum. It’s exactly the kind of leadership that we need from our elected officials,” Lira said. “We were also just as disappointed to see some of those Democrats come back. And it’s because those Democrats gave Republicans quorum that bills like the abortion ban and the anti-voting legislation were able to pass.”

Lira said the PAC was created specifically to primary those Democrats.

This was a thing I wondered about, and had seen some speculation about a few months ago when the quorum was freshly broken and tempers were high. I tried to keep an eye on it during the filing process, but there was a lot to keep up on, and if any WFP-backed candidates were out there, they didn’t make their presence known in a way that was visible to me. Now that we’re well past the filing deadline, let’s revisit this.

The first question is who the potential targets would be. I did a little digging into who among the Dems were here during the quorum break in Special Session #1, and who came back during Special Session #2 to bring the attendance count to the required level – this was in response to a private question I was asked. Long story short, I trawled through the daily journals on the Texas Legislature Online site, and found enough record votes to mostly fill in the picture.

For the first special session, I identified the following Dems who were present in Austin: Ryan Guillen, Tracy King, Eddie Morales, John Turner, Abel Herrero, Terry Canales, and Leo Pacheco. (There’s one I can’t identify; I suspect it was Harold Dutton, but he shows up in the next session, so it doesn’t really matter.) Guillen is now a Republican, Pacheco has since resigned, and Turner is not running for re-election. According to the SOS Qualified Candidates page, none of the others have primary opponents.

For the second special session, we can add these legislators, who were either there from the beginning or who showed up while the quorum was still not established: Dutton, Art Fierro, Mary Gonzalez, Bobby Guerra, Oscar Longoria, Eddie Lucio Jr, Joe Moody, James Talarico, Garnet Coleman, Armando Walle, and Ana Hernandez. Lucio and Coleman are not running. Talarico is running in a different district, HD50, which is open now that Celia Israel is running for Mayor of Austin. Fierro was paired with Claudia Ordaz Perez in redistricting. Of the rest, only Dutton and Gonzalez have primary opponents, and Dutton was a target well before the quorum break issue. Gonzalez, who has had primary challengers in the past as well for other reasons, faces someone named Rene Rodriguez, about whom I could find nothing. If the goal was to primary these Democrats, it sure doesn’t look like that goal was achieved.

Now, the WFP may well be playing a longer game. As we know, there wasn’t much time between the passage of the new maps and the start of filing season. Maybe they decided it was better to wait until 2024, or maybe they decided to focus more on races like CD35 (they have endorsed Greg Casar) and CD30. Maybe they’ll back Ordaz Perez and David Alcorta, the other candidate in HD50. Who knows? If they intended to make a bigger splash than that, I’d say they came up short. We’ll see what happens after this election.

The state of the state redistricting lawsuits

Dec 26th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

A good update, and a reminder that not all of the action is in federal court.

In two cases heard [December 14 and 15], a group of mostly Democratic, Hispanic lawmakers from both chambers challenged the legality of when and how Republicans drew the boundaries.

“All we’re asking is for Republicans, who claim to be constitutionalists, to start acting like it, and follow the plain meaning and reading of the Constitution,” said Roland Gutierrez, one of two Democratic state senators who are suing Texas.

Focusing on the timing are Gutierrez and Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, who sued to block the Legislature from redistricting in a special session this year. Also at issue are rules for keeping counties intact when drawing Texas House districts.

Similar to a suit they filed in federal court before redrawing began, the senators’ attorneys argued the Texas Constitution requires that redistricting be done in a regular session that won’t happen until 2023.

That makes the newly drawn state House and state Senate plans invalid, argued the legal team for Gutierrez and Eckhardt, of San Antonio and Austin, respectively.

The senators’ lawyers pointed to a provision in the state Constitution that requires the redistricting process to start in the first regular session after the decennial Census has been published, asking the court to block the new plans from being used.

State lawyers argued the provision does not prohibit apportionment at other times, and warned that blocking the map will disrupt the 2022 election process that is already in motion.

“The Legislature … is perfectly free to redistrict whenever it wants,” Will Thompson, the attorney general’s deputy chief for special litigation, said at the Dec. 15 hearing in district court in Travis County.

[…]

The senators’ legal team also argued the new state House map violated the “county line rule” of the Texas Constitution, which requires that counties with sufficient population be kept intact in drawing Texas House districts.

The second challenge, mounted by the Mexican American Legislative Caucus in the Texas House, made a similar case that the rule was broken, arguing it was designed to ensure people have local representation.

As lawmakers this fall debated the new House lines late into the night, they narrowly adopted a major change in South Texas. House District 37 was redrawn from a seat President Joe Biden won by 17 percentage points, to a seat the president won by only two points over former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

That amendment, developed by Kingsville Republican Rep. J.M. Lozano, was denounced by some Valley lawmakers. State Rep. Eddie Lucio III, D-Brownsville, called the change a “disingenuous, last-minute attempt to do a grab.”

The plaintiffs’ legal team argued the county line rule requires that two districts be wholly contained within Cameron County. Yet Lozano’s tweaks give Cameron County just one wholly contained district, with two that connect to adjoining counties.

The state’s lawyers argued the new boundaries do not dilute votes in Cameron County, and that Cameron got the number of districts it was constitutionally entitled to. The plaintiffs’ attorney rejected that interpretation of the rules.

“There is no doubt that to whatever extent Cameron County voters are a cohesive group … they get to elect the candidates of their choice,” said Thompson, one of the state’s lawyers.

District 37 Democratic candidate Ruben Cortez Jr. joined the senators’ suit, along with political organization Tejano Democrats. The new version of the district was joined with adjacent Willacy County.

“This Republican redistricting scheme is robbing the voice of Cameron County voters,” Cortez, also a member of the Texas State Board of Education, said in a news release.

The caucus’ complaint asked the court to block the Texas House map from being used in upcoming elections and allow for the creation of alternative boundaries.

Both sides discussed a full trial beginning Jan. 10.

It’s unclear, if the judges rule in favor of the plaintiffs on the county line rule, whether they would delay Texas House primary elections just for South Texas, or the entire state. The plaintiffs’ legal team asked the court to delay the primary to May 24.

Thompson, the state lawyer, said he expects the 2023 Legislature to have to revisit the maps.

The Gutierrez/Eckhardt lawsuit was originally filed in federal court, but at a hearing in October it was agreed that the plaintiffs would first pursue the matter in state court. The state lawsuit was filed on November 22, judging from the stamp on the document. The lawsuit over HD37 and Cameron County was one of two lawsuits filed by MALC, with the other being a broader federal lawsuit. I was not aware until this story that they had been combined, as the federal lawsuits (with the exception of the federal version of the Gutierrez/Eckhardt lawsuit) have been.

The cases are being heard by an interesting three-judge panel: Karin Crump, a Democrat and district court judge in Travis County, who is presiding; Ken Wise, a Republican was was re-elected to the 14th Court of Appeals in 2020; and Emily Miskel, a Republican district court judge from Collin County who is running for the 5th Court of Appeals in 2022. I assume this is the work of the Texas Multidistrict Litigation Panel, though that name is not mentioned in the story. Funny how once you become aware of something new you begin to see it everywhere.

As for the cases, with the standard I Am Not A Lawyer proviso, both of them seem pretty straightforward. Either the Lege is only allowed to embark on the decennial redistricting process in a regular session that follows the Census or it’s not, and either the county line rule means that a county with sufficient population to have more than one State House district in it has only one partial district in it, with the other(s) being fully within that county. Looking at the district viewer, I don’t see any other example of a county that has one complete district and more than one partial districts in it. There are no such examples in the current map, either – Cameron has all of HDs 37 and 38 and part of 35. It seems likely to me that previous legislatures didn’t think this was something they could do. And as for whether Cameron County voters get to elect the candidate of their choice, that’s nice and all but it’s not the question that was asked, nor is it relevant to the county line rule.

As for the claim that the Lege is free to redistrict whenever it wants, then it could in theory redraw new lines after every election. (The 2003 DeLay re-redistricting was only for Congress, which is outside the scope of the Gutierrez/Eckhardt lawsuit. That same claim was made about “mid-decade” Congressional redistricting, and I don’t believe there was ever a federal ruling on that question.) Surely there are some limits on what the majority party can do.

The weakness of the state’s arguments suggests to me the possibility the plaintiffs could prevail, but we are getting way ahead of ourselves. I do think the state can reasonably claim it wasn’t their fault that the Census data was late, and that it’s less disruptive to redistrict in a special session so new maps can be in place for the intended election than to wait an entire cycle. The counter to that would be that this is what the Legislative Redistricting Board is for, though here I would say it’s not clear to me that the outcome would be any more favorable to the plaintiffs unless the LRB is restricted to just tweaking districts to equalize population. In other words, can the LRB draw whole new maps, in which case I’d expect them to come up with something exactly like what was adopted by the Lege, or must they use the existing maps and make only the minimal changes necessary to fix population imbalances? The Gutierrez/Eckhardt plaintiffs might “win” but not achieve anything, depending on how the court views that question. Someone with real legal experience should probably step in at this point and stop me from digging this hole any deeper.

Anyway. We might at least get an initial answer to these questions before voting begins, which would be nice. We might also get a split primary for at least part of the state, which is more than a little chaotic. Isn’t this fun?

Crystal Mason using SB1 to try to overturn her illegal voting conviction

Dec 13th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Hope this works. It would be one small good thing to come out of that otherwise harmful law.

Crystal Mason, the Tarrant County woman whose illegal voting conviction has garnered national attention, is asking for a Texas appeals court to overturn her conviction under a new provision of Texas’ recently adopted election law Senate Bill 1.

Mason, 46, was sentenced to five years in prison for attempting to cast a ballot in 2016′s presidential election. At the time, Mason was on supervised release from a federal tax fraud conviction and was prohibited from voting in Texas.

Her lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union this week filed a brief with the Texas Court of Criminal of Appeals citing the state’s new election law that took effect earlier this month in asking for her conviction to be overturned.

Tucked within SB 1 that was passed by the Texas Legislature in this year’s second special session is a section erasing criminal penalties for felons who attempt to vote without knowing that they were committing a crime. That portion of the law came about with Mason’s conviction in mind.

“SB 1 is a repudiation of Ms. Mason’s conviction and five-year sentence of incarceration,” the brief states.

[…]

Her attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union declined a request for comment. The Tarrant County District Attorney’s office, which prosecuted and has argued against overturning Mason’s conviction, said in an emailed statement that SB 1 has no bearing on Mason’s case.

“Even under the new law, she is guilty,” office spokeswoman Anna Tinsley Williams said. “She wasn’t convicted simply for casting the provisional ballot; she was convicted for casting a provisional ballot when she knew she was ineligible to vote. Knowledge of ineligibility is the key. This is not a case of mistaken voting.”

See here and here for some background. House Democrats had negotiated an amendment in the original bill during the regular session that would have retroactively covered Mason’s case, but it was taken out in the conference committee version by Senators on the committee, and that breaking of the faith was one of the catalysts for the initial quorum break during the regular session, which prevented the bill from getting a final vote. In the second special session, after House Dems had returned from Washington, a similar amendment was added to the House version of the bill, but it again ran into resistance in the Senate, with bill author Bryan Hughes the main obstacle. (How bad does Hughes look when even Briscoe fricking Cain was willing to add this provision to the bill?) If people can read the final version of the bill to include or not include Crystal Mason in its scope, then it’s at best a tossup what the CCA will do, and given their usual pro-prosecution bias, I can’t say I’m optimistic. But it’s sure worth the try.

By the way, medical abortion is now more tightly restricted in Texas, too

Dec 3rd, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Another piece of crap from the special session.

A new law limiting the use of abortion-inducing medication in Texas goes into effect Thursday.

The law makes it a felony to provide the medication after seven weeks of pregnancy, putting Texas at odds with federal regulations. It also makes it a crime to send the medication through the mail.

Medical abortion is the most common way women in Texas terminate their pregnancies, according to state data.

These new restrictions reflect a growing concern among abortion opponents about the rise of “self-managed” abortions, in which pregnant people obtain the medications from out-of-state or international providers, with or without a prescription.

There’s evidence that more women turn to self-managed abortions when legal abortion is restricted. Texans have been unable to access abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy since Sept. 1, when a controversial new ban went into effect.

“Texas is looking at the ways that people are navigating around restrictions and trying to essentially make that as unsafe and as frightening for people as possible in order to deter them,” said Farah Diaz-Tello, senior legal counsel for If/When/How, a reproductive justice legal group.

Diaz-Tello and other advocates worry that the new criminal penalties may make pregnant Texans fearful of seeking medical care after a self-managed abortion.

[…]

Texas’ new law also specifies that no one may provide abortion medication “by courier, delivery or mail service.”

Texas already required the medication to be provided by a physician in person. But this specific clause addresses a growing concern among abortion opponents that patients are trying to circumvent the required doctor visit by getting the drugs by mail, especially with the state’s new restrictions that bans abortions after around six weeks.

Called a “self-managed abortion,” this usually entails ordering abortion-inducing drugs online, with or without a prescription, from doctors, pharmacies and other providers out of state or overseas.

The FDA has attempted to crack down on some providers, including AidAccess, a group founded in 2018 by Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, a European doctor. AidAccess provides abortion-inducing medications to women in areas that have restricted access to the procedure.

Gomperts has said she will continue prescribing to patients in Texas. She told CBS News in September that she believes she is on solid legal ground since it is legal to prescribe this medication where she is based.

See here for the backgroun; I didn’t blog it at the time for whatever the reason. A bit more than half of all abortions in Texas are medical abortions, which the FDA says are safe up to ten weeks. I suspect Dr. Gomperts and others like her if they exist will get more business now, despite the prohibition on sending the medication via mail. It’s really a matter of enforcement, and it’s not clear to me how Texas will be able to do that. That FDA action against her was from 2019, by the way. It would be nice for the current FDA to maybe revisit that now. I don’t have anything positive to end with. This is where we are right now.

A brief update on the Gutierrez/Eckhardt redistricting lawsuit

Oct 31st, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

First news we’ve had in awhile.

Plaintiff: Democratic state Sens. Roland Gutierrez and Sarah Eckhardt

What the lawsuit argues: Ahead of lawmakers’ third special session, two Democratic state senators sued to block the Legislature from redistricting in a special session this year. The senators argued the Texas Constitution requires that redistricting be done in a regular session that won’t happen until 2023.

If successful, the federal lawsuit by Sens. Eckhardt of Austin and Gutierrez of San Antonio, with political organization Tejano Democrats, would require judges to create interim redistricting plans for the Legislature to use in the 2022 election cycle.

What’s next: The case, filed Sept. 1 in federal court in Austin, has been assigned to a three-judge panel of Reagan appointee Jerry Smith, Obama appointee Robert Pitman and Trump appointee Jeffrey Brown.

State lawyers have asked the court to consolidate the LULAC case with the senators’ case, and asked the court to abstain from a state matter. The officials also argued the plaintiffs misinterpreted the state constitution and cannot challenge the old maps.

On Tuesday, both sides indicated that the plaintiffs intend to pursue similar claims in state court. The three-judge panel then ordered the parties to file a joint status report “when they have determined the impact of the litigation in state court on this case.”

See here for the background on this lawsuit. The LULAC case is the one filed in mid-October after the maps were passed but before they were signed into law, with LULAC and several other groups as plaintiffs, and with MALDEF doing the filing. That lawsuit challenged all of the maps, including the Congressional map – the Gutierrez/Eckhardt lawsuit only challenged the legislative maps, as they are the ones that are covered by the state constitution.

What this sounds like to me is that the two Senators will file a new lawsuit in a state court, and action on the federal side will be put on pause until there is some kind of ruling there, at which point the three-judge panel will consider what its next steps are. I’ll keep an eye out for any news about that filing.

On a side note, this story also had a brief update about the Voto Latino lawsuit. That one was also assigned to a three-judge panel, and it too had an Obama appointee, a Trump appointee…and Jerry Smith. Who was involved in (I believe) the consolidated redistricting cases from the last decade. Do they keep him on ice just for these situations, or is is the luck of the draw? I am mystified. Reform Austin has more.

The new maps are now official

Oct 27th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Expect further lawsuits to follow.

Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday approved Texas’ new political maps for the state’s congressional, legislative and State Board of Education districts, according to Texas Legislature Online.

The maps were drawn to keep Texas Republicans in power for the next decade. They simultaneously diminish the power of voters of color — despite new census numbers pointing to Texans of color as the main force behind the state’s population growth.

The new districts will be used for the first time in next year’s primary and general elections, barring any court interventions.

The redistricting process, which happens every 10 years after new census data is released, is complicated and contentious. Legal battles have already begun, with one early lawsuit raising various claims that the new districts unfairly and illegally discriminate against voters of color. More legal challenges are expected to pop up in the near future.

That’s the main story; what follows is a listing of the stories for each milestone in the process during the last special session. The main points to take away here are that we’re going to have a regular March primary because there’s no reason not to, and there’s still time for a federal voting rights law to be passed. It would likely not have any immediate action, unless a plaintiff in the current or a future lawsuit could get a restraining order based on it, but it would make it easier to eventually get a map or maps thrown out in court. Would have been better in every conceivable way to have had such legislation in place two months ago, but here we are. There will be more lawsuits regardless, and we’ll see where they go and how long they take to get there. Reform Austin has more.

I think we are going to have a regular March primary

Oct 24th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

This happened in the second special session, after the Dems came back from Washington DC.

Senate Bill 13, from Senator Joan Huffman (R-Houston), has been sent to Governor Greg Abbott after being approved by the House and Senate this week.

The bill gives the Secretary of State the authority to change the dates of the primary election and any runoff election, along with related dates for candidate filings, depending on when a redistricting plan is finalized.

If the bill is signed into law, it would keep all current primary election and associated administrative dates the same, as long as a redistricting plan is completed by November 15th. This would set a primary date of March 1, 2022 and a runoff of May 24, 2022, with candidate filing taking place between November 29th and December 13th.

However, if a redistricting plan is not finished by November 15th, but is completed before December 28th, the primary election would be delayed to April 5, 2022 and the runoff would shift to June 21, 2022. Candidate filing would occur from January 10-24, 2022.

If the redistricting plan is not completed until after December 28th but before February 7, 2022, the primary would move to May 24, 2022, while the runoff would be pushed back to July 26, 2022. Candidates would be able to file between February 21 and March 7, 2022.

There was a bill to do this in the regular session that passed the Senate but did not come up for a vote in the House. As you may have noticed, all of the redistricting bills have been passed, and they await Greg Abbott’s signature, which I assume will happen shortly. Given that it’s not even November yet, we’re in plenty of time for that deadline. So, barring a court ruling that puts those maps on hold, I assume that the filing season will begin on November 15 as usual, with the primaries to follow in March. I haven’t seen any news stories to confirm this, perhaps because everyone had been assuming this all along, but we very much could have had delayed primaries, so I wanted to make note of this. If you have some reason to think otherwise, let us know in the comments.

Congressional map passes

Oct 20th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

And so the work is done. The lawyers are warming up their engines as we speak.

The Texas Legislature has signed off on new congressional districts that shore up the GOP’s dominance and yield little ground to the people of color who have driven the state’s growth.

Wrapping up their work to build a decade of population change into new political maps, the Senate and House on Monday each approved a negotiated, final version of the congressional map, which will go to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott for his signature. In complete control of the redistricting process, Republicans designed a map that will tighten their hold on diversifying parts of the state where the party’s grip on power was waning and lock in the GOP’s majority in the 38-seat delegation for the U.S. House.

The map also incorporates two additional House seats the state gained, the most of any state in this year’s reapportionment. Though Texas received those districts because of explosive population growth — 95% of it attributable to people of color — Republicans opted to give white voters effective control of both, which were drawn in the Houston and Austin areas.

The Senate approved the map on a 18-13 vote. The House followed with an 84-59 vote.

Previewing the legal battles that will follow, Democrats decried the lack of adequate representation for voters of color, shunning a map that diminishes their voices instead of reflecting the state’s changing racial and demographic makeup. Half of the 4 million residents the state gained in the past 10 years were Hispanic.

“What we’re doing in passing this congressional map is a disservice to the people of Texas. What we’re doing is hurtful to millions of Texans — it’s shameful,” state Rep. Rafael Anchía, the Dallas Democrat who chairs the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, told his colleagues before the vote. “I’d love to be able to say it is a stain on the legacy of voting rights, but that seems to be the playbook decade after decade after decade in this state.”

The Republicans who led the redistricting process offered little defense of the maps from the Senate and House floors before the final votes. They have previously said the congressional map was drafted based on a series of “priorities,” including partisanship and keeping communities of interest together. They’ve also argued the map complies with federal laws protecting voters of color from discrimination, though they have declined to offer specifics about their legal analysis.

[…]

Republicans placed a new district, the 37th Congressional District, in the Austin area to capture Democratic-leaning voters that were endangering the prospects of Republican incumbents in nearby districts. They also drew in a new district, the 38th Congressional District, that would offer Republicans safe territory in the Houston area. In both districts, white residents would make up more than 60% of eligible voters.

During the Senate’s first debate over the map earlier this month, state Sen. Joan Huffman, the Houston Republican who led the Senate’s redistricting process, told her colleagues her team had seen “no strong basis in evidence” to create a new opportunity district for voters of color.

Like I said, the lawyers are ready. You can see the map here. As the story notes, one significant change was to undo the scrambling of CDs 09, 18, and 29 that left Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee and Al Green living in different districts. They got what they asked for, and in the process they put most of my neighborhood, including myself, back into CD18. You should check and see where you wound up.

I don’t have much more to say about the maps at this time. I’ll keep a lookout for electoral data when it becomes readily available, and of course I’ll keep an eye on the inevitable litigation. In the meantime, the big question is are we finally done with all this crap?

Early Tuesday morning, both the House and Senate adjourned the third special session of the year, capping a grueling stretch that featured a weekslong Democratic walkout over the GOP’s priority elections bill and a series of proposals to build on what was already a triumphant regular session for conservatives.

But the latest special session ended without lawmakers passing two of Abbott’s priorities — legislation to increase an illegal voting penalty and to ban vaccine mandates by any entity in Texas.

In each of the previous three legislative sessions this year, Abbott was firm that he would keep calling lawmakers back to Austin until they addressed the legislation he required of them — most notably the GOP elections bill and changes to the bail system targeting violent offenders. He placed a bill targeting transgender student athletes on each of the three special session agendas, until it was finally passed in the most recent session.

On Monday night, as the chambers were nearing sine die, Abbott declined to say whether a fourth special session would be necessary. He also did not say anything Tuesday about the possibility, but he did issue a statement applauding lawmakers for their work in the third special session that suggested he was satisfied with what they had gotten done.

“These dynamic achievements would not have been possible without the men and women of the Texas House and Senate who worked tirelessly through the third Special Session to ensure these priorities made it across the finish line,” he said. “Because of their efforts, the future of Texas is stronger, safer, and freer.”

But the unfinished bills are fraught with intraparty politics, and could expose Abbott to attacks from his right, which he has been increasingly attuned to as he prepares for his 2022 reelection campaign.

Some lawmakers expect there to be a fourth special session, but not in the short term — and maybe closer to primary season.

May the Lord have mercy on us all. At least we know that the remaining items Abbott might want are more contentious among Republicans, and that may act as a brake on them. But man, do I never want to have to depend on Republicans doing the thing that I want them to do, because that trick never works. The Chron has more.

The Lege may fail to enshrine Abbott’s max anti-vaxx order into law

Oct 19th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

One bit of good news.

Legislation intended to block any Texas entity, including hospitals and private businesses, from mandating COVID-19 vaccines for employees has stalled out in the Senate with less than two days left in the third special legislative session this year.

State Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, said he opposes the bill, which makes entities requiring the vaccines vulnerable to discrimination lawsuits. Seliger said the legislation — added to the session agenda as a late priority by Gov. Greg Abbott — does not have the votes to pass in the upper chamber.

“At the moment it’s not too well developed,” Seliger said of Senate Bill 51, authored by state Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Tyler, calling it “anti-business.”

“I’ve got some real reservations because I think it’s another example of big government,” Seliger said. “And we don’t do that.”

SB 51 has been on the Senate’s calendar since Thursday, but the chamber has not taken action, even as it passed other priority legislation.

The special session is scheduled to end Tuesday, and the vaccine legislation is one of only a few outstanding Abbott priorities that appears unlikely to get through the finish line.

“It’s dead,” state Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen, said of SB 51.

[…]

More than two dozen medical and business advocacy groups quickly criticized SB 51, pushing back against the legislation in the days after it was introduced last week. Hughes filed the bill after Abbott asked lawmakers last week to take up this issue to ensure Texans aren’t required to get vaccinated, saying that vaccines are “safe, effective, and our best defense against the virus, but should remain voluntary and never forced.”

Abbott called for the legislation as he took executive action to ban private companies from requiring employees or customers to be vaccinated against COVID-19, which will be in effect statewide even if lawmakers don’t act. His order came four weeks after Democratic President Joe Biden announced that federal contractors must have all employees vaccinated against COVID-19 and that businesses with more than 100 employees must mandate vaccination against the virus or require regular testing.

The organizations opposing the bill, including several chambers of commerce, the Texas Association of Business, the Texas Hospital Association, the Texas Association of Manufacturers, the Texas Hotel & Lodging Association and the Texas Trucking Association, have warned lawmakers of the legislation’s risks to small businesses, workplaces that rely on federal funding and immunocompromised Texans.

The warnings were notable in a state where business interests work closely with pro-business Republicans to influence legislation.

“We’re getting tremendous amount of communications from the business community saying this is their job,” Seliger said. “They set the rules and working conditions in their places of business.”

See here and here for some background. From the jump there were stories of strong opposition from business groups, who are normally very friendly to Republicans, to this bill. Given that the session ends today, I’d say the odds that this bill dies with it are pretty good. But I don’t want to get too overconfident, because it is entirely possible that enough objectionable pieces of that bill could get filed off, and it would be at the top of the agenda for a fourth session, whether or not one is needed. So count this as a provisional win, and hope for the best from here.

Down to the wire for Congressional redistricting

Oct 18th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

Time is running out in this session. Of course, there’s always the next session shudder.

A redraw of the state’s congressional map to include a decade of population growth could be headed to last-minute backdoor negotiations after the Texas House made a series of changes to the Senate’s proposed boundaries.

The House approved the congressional map on a 79-56 vote early Sunday, leaving in place district configurations that largely protect incumbents while denying Hispanics control of either of the two additional seats the state earned based on the 4 million new residents it gained, according to 2020 census results. Half of the new residents were Hispanic.

But the House late Saturday tweaked the Senate-approved map so that two Black Democratic members of Congress in the Houston area would not be pitted against each other. The chamber also amended the map to just barely restore the Hispanic-majority electorate of a Central Texas district stretching from Austin to San Antonio that the Senate plan had shrunk.

Early Sunday morning, the Senate rejected those changes and requested what’s known as a conference committee, made up of members of both chambers, to hash out the differences. That deal would require an additional vote by each chamber before this third special session ends Tuesday.

[…]

Throughout the evening, Democrats warned of “blatant legal defects” that undermine the electoral strength of voters of color in choosing their representatives in Washington, D.C. At times offering vague reasoning for their opposition, the House’s Republican majority repeatedly rejected their bids to rework the map and create additional districts in which voters of color could control elections.

A failed proposal to create such a district for Hispanics in western Dallas County grew particularly contentious as state Rep. Jacey Jetton, R-Richmond, spoke against the proposal, noting it would reduce the Hispanic population in a neighboring Democratic district.

In response, state Rep. Rafael Anchía, the Dallas Democrat who had offered the proposal, questioned why Republicans would object to the new district while signing off on a configuration that instead draws some of those Hispanics into a massive rural district with almost surgical precision.

Under the plan Republicans approved, the 6th Congressional District — which stretches across seven mostly white rural counties to the south of Dallas — extends a finger northward into Dallas County to capture Hispanic neighborhoods. That engineering simultaneously boosts white voters’ control of the district while stranding Hispanic voters who in the past were concentrated enough to influence election outcomes.

“You really have to try hard to deny Latinos in North Texas the ability to select that candidate of their choice, but that’s what’s baked in this plan,” Anchía said.

[…]

In reconfiguring the Austin-area districts, the Senate had brought the share of Hispanic eligible voters in the 35th Congressional District down from 52.6% to 48%. House Republicans voted to give Hispanic voters a marginal majority by bringing them up to 50.5% of eligible voters in the district, which is currently represented by longtime Democratic U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett.

In that same amendment, Republicans also upped the percentage of Hispanic eligible voters to exactly 50% in CD-27, a district that runs from the Gulf Coast up to Central Texas. But the seat would likely remain under Republican control, giving Donald Trump a hypothetical 20.5-percentage-point margin of victory at 2020 levels of support. The district is currently represented by Republican Michael Cloud of Victoria.

Democrats voted against those changes because they also served to further boost Republican performance in neighboring CD-15, which is anchored in Hidalgo County. The Senate reconfigured that district to flip it from one that Joe Biden narrowly carried to one that Trump would’ve won by 2.6 percentage points. Under the House’s changes, Trump’s margin of victory increases to 4.6 percentage points.

The CD-15 incumbent, U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-McAllen, has said he would move to run for reelection in the reconfigured CD-34, which was unexpectedly close in 2020 but was shored up as a safe Democratic seat. But it appears he will be able to stay put, thanks to a Democratic amendment passed Saturday that would draw his residence into CD-34.

Save for exceptions like CD-15, the GOP appeared to prioritize incumbent protection over aggressively running up the party’s numbers in the congressional delegation. But the map does in fact give Republicans a bigger edge, increasing from 22 to 25 the number of districts that would have voted for Donald Trump in 2020. The state’s current delegation consists of 23 Republicans and 13 Democrats.

See here and here for the background. I expect that the conference committee will produce a final map that will get approved in time, which would at least have the benefit of lessening the need for yet another special session. That’s all up to Greg Abbott of course, and if there’s some other dumbass wingnut thing he wants to do to fake looking tough for Republican primary voters, he can do it. Having Congressional maps in place would mean he doesn’t have to, for whatever that’s worth. This map is trash, but we know the courts will rubber stamp it, so the Republicans have no need to care. Pass it and get out of town, it’s the best we can hope for.

The Lege is now 3/4 done with redistricting

Oct 17th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

All but the Congressional maps are done. They’re just plowing through it.

The Texas Legislature is nearing the end of its work to incorporate a decade’s worth of population growth into new political maps — pressing forward with efforts to cement GOP dominance of the statehouse and deny voters of color a greater say in who gets elected.

In the final stretch of a 30-day special legislative session, the Republican majorities in the House and Senate on Friday almost simultaneously signed off on new political maps for the opposite chamber, sending them to Gov. Greg Abbott, also a Republican, for his signature. The votes were largely procedural as neither chamber made any changes. It’s customary for each chamber to defer to the other in drawing up maps for its own members, but both must give them a vote.

By a vote of 81-60, the House granted approval to a Senate map that would draw safe seats for Republican incumbents who were facing competitive races as their districts diversified over the last 10 years.

The Senate gave an 18-13 vote to a House map that would fortify the Republican majority of the 150 districts, bolstering those that had grown competitive over the last decade and devising new battleground districts.

The House also signed off on a new map for the Republican-controlled State Board of Education, which sets standards for Texas public schools. Still left on the docket is a House vote on a redraw of the state’s congressional map that would largely protect incumbents in Congress while reducing the number of districts in which Black and Hispanic residents make up the majority of eligible voters. That vote is expected Saturday.

If adopted, the maps could remain in place for the next 10 years, though it’s all but certain that they will face legal challenges that could result in changes.

[…]

Sixteen Republican incumbents will be drawn into safe districts for reelection, while two Senate seats being vacated by Republicans would almost certainly go to new GOP candidates over Democrats next year based on the percentage of voters in the district who voted for Donald Trump over Joe Biden in last year’s presidential race.

Democrats would also likely lose Senate District 10 in North Texas, represented by Sen. Beverly Powell of Fort Worth. That would shift the Senate’s partisan makeup from the current 18 Republicans and 13 Democrats to 19 Republicans and 12 Democrats under the proposed map.

Voters of color in the district, which sits entirely in Tarrant County, have banded together with white voters over the last decade to elect their candidates of choice. Its eligible voters are 21% Black, 20% Hispanic and 54% white.

But under the proposed map, SD 10’s Black and Hispanic populations are split into two other districts with majority-white electorates.

The voters who remain in the newly drawn District 10 would also see major changes. Black and Hispanic voters in urban areas of south Fort Worth would be lumped in with seven rural counties to the south and west that would drive up the district’s population of white eligible voters to 62% while diminishing its population of voters of color.

Tarrant County House Democrats warned that federal courts had ruled that a similar attempt to redraw the district last decade was discriminatory. They offered multiple amendments to keep District 10 entirely in the county.

[…]

The House’s new map also pulls back on Hispanic and Black voters’ potential influence in electing their representatives.

The map brings the number of districts in which Hispanics make up the majority of eligible voters down from 33 to 30. The number of districts with Black residents as the majority of eligible voters would go from seven to six. Meanwhile, the number of districts with a white majority among eligible voters would increase from 83 to 89.

The map moved through the Senate chamber without any discussion, save for an earlier objection from state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., a Democrat from the Rio Grande Valley, during a Senate Redistricting Committee meeting Friday morning.

Lucio denounced a revision to the map that would carve up predominantly Hispanic communities in the Rio Grande Valley in service of creating a new competitive House district in the typically blue region. The change, forced by a member who does not represent the affected districts, blindsided the House members from the area.

“Members, this is my fourth redistricting session,” Lucio told other members of the committee. “In my time in the Legislature, I have never seen such blatant disregard for the process.”

Meanwhile, Republicans shot down Democratic proposals to create new opportunities for Hispanic or Black Texans to control elections.

State Rep. Todd Hunter, the Corpus Christi Republican serving as the House’s chief map-drawer, has previously argued the map “achieves fair representation for the citizens of Texas” while complying with federal law.

The redraw will ultimately aid Republicans’ ability to control the chamber for years to come.

The House map creates 85 districts that would have favored Trump at 2020 levels of support and 65 that would have voted for Biden. The current partisan breakdown of the House is 83 Republicans and 67 Democrats, though Trump only won 76 of the current districts in 2020.

See here and here for some background. The speed with which these maps have been approved is I believe one part there being basically no changes proposed in the other chamber, and one part a sense of urgency on the legislators’ part to get the hell out of town already. I can hardly blame them for that, but in the end it’s up to Greg Abbott.

On the subject of litigation over these maps, on claims of racial discrimination and voting rights violations, I remain pessimistic about the likelihood of any redress from the courts. Not because I think the maps are fair and accurately reflect the population, but because I have no expectation that this Supreme Court will countenance any voting rights claims. We could still do something about that at a federal level, but until Senators Manchin and Sinema let go of their bizarre obsession with the filibuster as it is currently defined, that ain’t going anywhere.

That said, I am reasonably optimistic about the potential for gains in the State House, if not in 2022 then in the coming years. The Chron story on the passage of these maps is a reminder of why.

The new Texas House map will protect Republican control by shedding Democratic-leaning areas where the party has lost support and moving those to blue districts while shoring up red ones.

That give-and-take is evident in west Harris County where two red districts, represented by Republican state Reps. Mike Schofield of Katy and Lacey Hull of Houston, are redrawn to include red-leaning precincts from Democratic state Rep. Jon Rosenthal’s nearby district; Rosenthal’s district will get blue-leaning areas now represented by the two Republicans.

As the state’s demographics change, however, there are only so many reliably red areas from which to pull. That meant for some districts, the best Republicans could do was make changes to benefit incumbents.

For example, the Energy Corridor district represented by state Rep. Jim Murphy, a Republican who is not seeking re-election, would give up some GOP precincts to Hull. Former President Donald Trump won Murphy’s district by 4 percentage points in 2020, but under the new map, that margin would drop to 2 points.

You’ve seen me make a version of this argument in previous posts. In the House, unlike the other maps, the Republicans were constrained by the county rule, which did not allow them to extend mostly rural districts into urban and suburban counties to dilute their Democratic communities. That forced them to draw a large number of districts with a relatively modest margin for Donald Trump, and the large majority of them are in counties where the trends have been moving strongly in a Democratic direction. Things can certainly change, and any given election can favor one party or the other, but overall that seems like a highly unstable equilibrium for the GOP.

The fourth map is of course the Congressional map. The Senate approved a map a few days ago, and the House committee approved it with no changes, as House Redistricting Chair Todd Hunter insisted that any amendments be made on the House floor. That puts them in position to be done with the entire business by the time the session ends, though I expect there to be a big fight when this map comes up for debate. The proposed map does some truly outlandish things to break up urban counties and communities of color, which I’m sure will draw a ton of heat and more threats of litigation from Dems. I expect them to get the job done, though if there are changes it will have to go back to the Senate for final approval. If it needs to go to a conference committee, that will almost surely require a fourth special session to finish it off. God help us all. Daily Kos has more.

House passes anti-trans sports bill

Oct 16th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

10 comments

Disgraceful.

The Texas House approved legislation on Thursday that would restrict transgender student athlete participation in school sports, clearing a notable hurdle for supporters of the measure after similar legislation sailed through the Senate and stalled in the House three times prior this year.

House Bill 25, authored by state Rep. Valoree Swanson, R-Spring, passed with a 76-54 vote. Before Thursday’s vote, House Speaker Dade Phelan signaled that the House would have enough votes to pass the restrictive sports legislation. The bill will now head to the Senate, where it is expected to pass.

Under HB 25, student athletes in K-12 public schools would be required to compete on sports teams that correspond with the sex listed on their birth certificate received at or near the time of their birth. The legislation singles out transgender children who would be prohibited from participating on sports teams that match their gender identity.

The University Interscholastic League, which governs school sports in Texas, already requires an athlete’s gender be determined by the sex listed on their birth certificate. Swanson has said HB 25 would simply “codify” existing UIL rules. However, UIL recognizes any legally modified birth certificates. That policy could accommodate someone who may have had their birth certificate changed to match their gender identity, which can sometimes be an arduous process.

HB 25 would not allow recognition of these legally modified birth certificates unless changes were made because of a clerical error. It’s not clear though how it will be determined if a birth certificate has been legally modified or not. According to the UIL, the process for checking student birth certificates is left up to schools and districts, not the UIL.

Transgender advocates and parents of transgender children have argued HB 25 unfairly targets children who may see sports as a refuge. And they note that bills such as HB 25 and others that have targeted transgender children this year — such as legislation that limits gender-affirming care — have already inflicted a mental toll on youth and families.

See here and here for the background. I don’t have anything new to say. This is an atrocity, it has already done a great deal of harm, and the most likely outcome, at least in the foreseeable future, is for athletes who are biologically female but who don’t look feminine enough to be harassed about their appearance. I am still waiting for the NCAA to follow through on its threatened actions, if only to serve as a reminder that this sort of crap does have some consequences. The Chron, The 19th, and Mandy Giles have more.

House approves its map

Oct 14th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

We’re getting close to the finish line.

Donuts – they’re not just for breakfast anymore

The Texas House on Wednesday approved proposed political boundaries for the lower chamber’s 150 districts that aim to fortify Republicans’ strength in the state House for the next decade.

House Bill 1, authored by state Rep. Todd Hunter, a Corpus Christi Republican who chairs the lower chamber’s redistricting committee, will now head to the Senate for consideration.

The House’s 83-63 vote comes as the Legislature rounds out its third special session of the year, an up to 30-day stretch ordered by Gov. Greg Abbott that has focused on redrawing the state’s congressional, Senate, House and State Board of Education maps based on the latest census data. Those numbers, which were delayed largely because of the pandemic, showed that people of color fueled 95% of the state’s population growth over the past decade.

Despite those growth trends, the number of districts in which white people make up the majority of eligible voters would increase from 83 to 89 in the new map. Meanwhile, the number of districts with a Hispanic majority among eligible voters would drop from 33 to 30, while the number of districts with Black residents as the majority of eligible voters would go from seven to six. Those numbers are based on census estimates of the number of citizens in each district who are of the voting age.

The new map includes 85 districts that would have voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election and 65 that would have voted for Joe Biden. That’s one less Trump district than was originally proposed in the House late last month. The current partisan breakdown of the House is 83 Republicans and 67 Democrats, though Trump only won 76 of the current House districts in 2020.

The special session is slated to end Oct. 19, which means lawmakers have a week left to hash out differences over those maps and other items included on the agenda set by Abbott.

See here for the background, and here for the map. This Trib story goes in deeper about that weird donut job in Bell County. At this point, the Lege might actually finish off their business in time to prevent the need for a third session, given that all they need to do is approve the other chambers’ maps. I would think that the SBOE and legislative maps would likely be easy enough for them, but maybe the Congressional map might get worked over in the House. Map drawing is a time honored way for ambitious legislators to find themselves a Congressional district to run in, after all. Or maybe they’re all sick of being in Austin and don’t have any desire to quarrel over small changes that favor one person over another. I thought it would take them longer to get this far, so who knows.

I mentioned before that the Heights was largely reunited under this new plan, all in HD145. There’s still a split in the Senate, with most of the Heights in SD15 but the eastern end in SD06. The main way that this reunification could occur was by radically moving HD148.

State Rep. Penny Morales Shaw, D-Houston, also opposed changes to her new district that she said leaves her with just a third of her current constituency.

Under the proposed map, Morales Shaw’s district would be shifted completely outside Loop 610, losing the Heights and Near Northside, most of which would be moved into state Rep. Christina Morales’ district. Morales Shaw’s District 148 would be expanded past Beltway 8 into northwest Harris County, taking in parts of Jersey Village and nearby suburbs, while cutting into area now represented by at least five other members.

The district’s Hispanic citizen voting-age population would decrease from 46 percent to 37 percent, and Morales Shaw said the residents that would be moved to other districts are from high-turnout communities.

“Chairman, from your knowledge, would you agree this dismantling and remaking of 148 is one of the most egregious examples that you’ve seen of retrogression in the Texas redistricting map?” Morales Shaw asked [State Rep. Rafael] Anchía during a round of questioning that seemed aimed at creating a record for a future lawsuit.

Anchía said District 148 is protected under Section II of the Voting Rights Act, which prevents discrimination against minorities during the political mapmaking process, “and to dismantle a protected district like that is one of the more problematic data points in the underlying map.”

Zoom in on that map and see for yourself. You know I’m pessimistic about any prospects for litigation, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

UPDATE: Reform Austin has some more details about the latest map.

HD118 runoff on November 2

Oct 13th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Should help a bit with turnout, I guess. Better than some random day in January, anyway.

Gov. Greg Abbott announced Monday that Nov. 2 will be the date of the special election runoff to replace former state Rep. Leo Pacheco, D-San Antonio, a seat that Republicans are pushing to flip.

Early voting begins in a week.

The runoff for the Democratic-leaning seat in House District 118 features Democrat Frank Ramirez and Republican John Lujan. Ramirez is a former staffer for the San Antonio City Council, while Lujan briefly held House the seat in 2016.

Lujan finished first in the initial special election late last month, getting 42% of the vote to 20% for Ramirez. There were two other Democrats on the ballot and one other Republican.

Republicans have latched on to the race as an early test of their drive to make new inroads in South Texas after President Joe Biden underperformed there last year. Meanwhile, Democrats are working to show they will not be upset like they have been in past special elections in the San Antonio area.

Nov. 2 is also the date of the statewide constitutional amendment election.

See here for the background. Just for grins, the turnout in Bexar County in 2019 for the constitutional amendments was 9.6%, and in 2017 it was 3.7%. I’ve forgotten the entire year 2019 so I couldn’t tell you if there was something on that ballot that might have moved people – there wasn’t anything specific to Bexar or San Antonio that year that I saw. Like I said, may push the runoff totals up a bit, but probably not very much. And I am once again asking you to remember that Bexar County is not in South Texas, and that Democrats in Bexar County did better in 2020 than in 2016, including in HD118. Doesn’t mean Dems can’t lay an egg there, just that the “South Texas” narrative strikes me as misguided. Anyway, if you live in this district or know someone who does, make sure they get out and vote.

Senate passes Congressional map

Oct 9th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Start the litigation countdown. Yes, I know, this still has to pass the House, but still.

The Texas Senate approved a map Friday that would largely protect incumbents in Congress while reducing the number of districts in which Black and Hispanic residents make up the majority of eligible voters — stymieing the growth of the state’s Democratic Party representation in Washington, D.C.

The congressional map is focused more on protecting incumbents than on growing the power of the dominant Republican Party in the state by flipping districts from blue to red. But the map, proposed by GOP state Sen. Joan Huffman of Houston, helps Republicans by increasing the number of districts that would have voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election and decreasing those that would have gone for Joe Biden.

In anticipation of federal challenges to the map, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican who presides over the Senate, said in a statement Friday that the proposal approved by the chamber was “legal and fair” and represented a “commitment to making sure every Texan’s voice is heard in Washington, D.C.”

[…]

State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio, proposed a map that would create three additional districts where Hispanics made up the majority, bringing the number of those districts to 10.

But Republicans rejected the proposal, with Huffman saying the amendment had been drafted less than 24 hours before the Senate’s vote on the maps and would result in a “detailed and painstaking racial gerrymander” in North Texas to draw a new Hispanic-majority district in the same area as the current Congressional District 33, represented by U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth.

Gutierrez accused Republicans of racially discriminating against voters of color.

“How else do we describe a situation where Texas gains new political power because of the physical presence of millions of Black, Brown, and Asian bodies, and yet the political establishment does not give those very Texans the ability to elect more candidates to represent them?” he said in a statement. “It is an insult to the foundations of our democracy.”

Under the proposed maps, voters of color may end up with less representation in the congressional delegation. The new map drops the number of districts in which Hispanics make up a majority of eligible voters from eight to seven, and the districts in which Black Texans make up a majority of eligible voters from one to zero.

The number of districts where whites make up a majority of eligible voters goes up to 23 although the state’s white population — which increased by just 187,252 — was swamped by the growth of people of color.

See here for more on the initial map, which looks to be largely the same as the final map. Which we know is totally fair and representative because Dan Patrick says it is. The House will likely make some changes, but it seems unlikely to be substantively different. I’ll say this much, they’ve given Harris County Democrats a new district to target, and I feel confident that any Republican who wins the new CD38 is never going to get a free pass. I’ll be interested to see who files for this on the Democratic side.

As for the coming litigation, the arguments are clear, it’s just a matter of what SCOTUS will allow in the post-Voting Rights Act world that it wants. I will say again, it’s not too late for a new Voting Rights Act to be passed. We’re going to need an upgrade in the US Senate to make that happen, I fear.

Speaking of litigation, I would love to know what the status of the Gutierrez/Eckhardt lawsuit is. That had to do with the legislative maps, not the Congressional map, but given the speed with which those maps are moving along, we will be reaching a point of no return soon. Let’s at least have a hearing on this one before events make it moot, OK?

UPDATE: I should have spent more time looking at the District Viewer, because I have just now realized that this map moves me out of CD18, where I’ve been for 30 years, and into CD29. I feel a little weird about that.

House committee advances anti-trans sports bill

Oct 8th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

They finally found a path to pass it. They sure put plenty of energy into it.

A Texas bill prohibiting transgender student athletes from joining school sports teams aligned with their gender identity is heading to the full Texas House, where it is likely to pass, following a House committee’s approval Wednesday.

After more than eight hours of emotional testimony, the House Select Committee on Constitutional Rights and Remedies voted 8-4 along party lines to advance House Bill 25. The legislation, authored by state Rep. Valoree Swanson, R-Spring, would restrict student athletes at public schools to playing on sports teams that correspond with the sex listed on their birth certificate at or near their time of birth.

Lawmakers’ attempts to enshrine such restrictions into law have failed three previous times this year. But Wednesday’s committee vote helped the legislation clear a key hurdle that increases its likelihood of becoming law this time.

[…]

During multiple legislative sessions this year, the Texas Legislature has introduced other bills targeting transgender youth, such as legislation that would limit gender-affirming care for children and classifying the care as child abuse.

The legislation advanced Wednesday is similar to Senate Bill 3, which passed in the Senate. But the upper chamber’s bill was assigned to the House Public Education Committee, in which legislators have yet to hold a hearing on the bill.

During the regular legislative session, that education committee passed legislation targeting transgender youth participation in sports, but it died in the full House after it failed to meet a key deadline. In a subsequent special session, a Democratic walkout prevented the House from even taking up legislation. And during the second special session, state Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, chair of the House Public Education Committee, blocked legislation from moving to the House floor.

With HB 25 advanced by the Select Committee on Constitutional Rights and Remedies, it now heads to the full chamber. House Speaker Dade Phelan has said that the House would have enough votes to pass the legislation. More than half of House members have signed on as coauthors of similar legislation introduced in previous sessions. If the bill passes the lower chamber, it will then head to the Senate, which is likely to approve it.

[…]

Business leaders have also been critical of anti-LGBTQ legislation. René Lara, legislative director for Texas AFL-CIO, testified against HB 25, saying the legislature is not prioritizing more important matters such as labor shortage complaints stemming from the pandemic.

Texas Competes, a coalition of almost 1,500 business organizations, re-released an open letter this week saying that it was against legislation that targets the LGBTQ community. About 70 major employers signed on to the letter, including Amazon, Dell Technologies and Microsoft.

Jessica Shortall, managing director of Texas Competes, said some companies are concerned that legislation targeting LGBTQ Texans presents the state as unwelcoming to potential residents.

“We have folks that are really concerned about young talent — millennial and zoomer talent — who [are] overwhelmingly supportive, much more even than their older peers, of LGBTQ people,” Shortall said in an interview.

See here for the last update, and here for a long Twitter thread by Jessica Shortall, who was at the hearing. I’m old enough to remember when the NCAA threatened to pull sporting events from states like Texas that passed anti-trans legislation. I hope they can remember that far back, too. In the meantime, I don’t see anything that will stop this from passing. My heart is with all the children and their families who are being harmed by this legislative malevolence. The Chron has more.

Senate approves its map

Oct 6th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

7 comments

They wasted no time, which is another way of saying that they didn’t bother giving anyone else much time to provide input or feedback.

Definitely protecting herself

The Texas Senate has approved a new political map for its own members that would entrench Republican dominance in the chamber for the next 10 years, even as Democrats argued the changes do not reflect the interests of people of color in the state who have fueled Texas’ growth over the last decade.

The proposal, put forth by state Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, was approved late Monday by a vote of 20-11 and would draw safe districts for GOP incumbents who were facing competitive races as their districts diversified in recent years and started voting for more Democrats.

Sixteen Republican incumbents would be drawn into safe districts for reelection, while two Senate seats being vacated by Republicans would almost certainly go to new GOP candidates over Democrats next year based on the percentage of voters in the district who voted for Donald Trump over Joe Biden in last year’s presidential race.

At the same time, Huffman’s proposal added no additional districts where people of color would represent a majority of the district’s eligible voters, even as Black, Hispanic and Asian Texans drove 95% of the state’s growth since the last census. Hispanics, in particular, were responsible for half of the increase of nearly 4 million people in the state’s population and now nearly match the number of white Texans in the state.

The state currently has 21 districts where the majority of eligible voters are white, seven with Hispanic majorities, one where Black residents are in the majority and two where no racial group makes up more than half of the total.

“The maps that are being proposed are not an accurate reflection of the growth of Texas,” said Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio, who leads the Senate Hispanic Caucus. “Without any changes to this current map, the state of Texas could potentially go 30 years, think about that, three decades, without having added a Hispanic or Latino opportunity district.”

Menéndez proposed a map that he crafted with civil rights organizations to add one district in North Texas where Hispanics would make up the majority of eligible voters and be poised to select their preferred candidate. Hispanics are now the largest ethnic group in Dallas County. That proposal was rejected.

Upon pushback from Democratic senators, Huffman insisted that she’d drawn the maps “blind to race.”

“I have followed the law, I have drawn blind to race, I believe the maps I’ve drawn are compliant under the Voting Rights Act,” she said.

See here and here for the background. I’m sure Sen. Huffman would like you to believe what she said – she may even believe it herself – but the odds that one could reduce the number of Hispanic opportunity districts after a decade in which half the population growth was driven by that community without having a clear idea of what one was doing and why are just really small. If there’s one thing I trust about the Republicans in this process, it’s that they know what they’re doing. They might be blinkered by longer-term demographic changes – the 2011 map was supposed to be a 20-11 Republican map, as this one is supposed to be 19-12 – but there’s nothing blind about their actions. Their eyes are wide open.

Speaking of 20-11:

.
The Texas Senate doesn’t have the most transparent process in the history of the world, and excluding journalists from the floor makes it worse.

— Scott Braddock (@scottbraddock) 8:19 PM – 04 October 2021

As Braddock notes elsewhere, redistricting is first and foremost “every person for themselves”, and the votes surely reflect that. There could have been a more aggressive gerrymander that might have made life more difficult for one of those three Democrats, but there wasn’t. And since this was going to pass anyway, this is what happens. The SBOE map was also approved by the Senate, with everyone paying about as much attention to it as I had expected. Both go to the House now, which is working on its own map.

The Senate returns to its usual crap

Oct 6th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

What an absolute disaster our state’s upper chamber is.

The Texas Senate began work Monday on two Republican voting bills that have uncertain futures — one raising criminal penalties for illegal voting and another that got a recent boost from former President Donald Trump because it would allow for audits of 2020 general election results.

Senate Bill 47 by Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, would let state and county leaders of the two major political parties pursue audits of 2020 election results in individual counties. SB 47 also would let candidates and party officials demand audits to confirm the results of future elections.

The bill, however, is not eligible for passage because it is not reflected in the special session agenda as set by Gov. Greg Abbott, the only person with the power to call the Legislature into special session and set its agenda.

Abbott has not indicated whether he will add the topic to the session’s to-do list.

And then there’s SB 9, which would make certain types of illegal voting a felony again after the Legislature knocked the offenses down to a misdemeanor in the previous special session.

Abbott added the issue to the special session Thursday, saying the lighter penalties — changed by a House amendment in the closing days of the second special session — sent the wrong message about the state’s commitment to election integrity.

Abbott’s request, however, was snubbed by House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, who said House members won’t undo their “thoughtful amendments” and will instead focus on redistricting with little more than two weeks remaining in the third special session.

See here for more about the fruadit, which Bettencourt’s bill would enshrine into law as a permanent source of chaos and disinformation. Both bills were voted out of committee and have now been approved by the full Senate. In theory, neither of these will get anywhere – there’s no agenda item for a fraudit bill, and Speaker Phelan has pooped on the double-secret-illegal-voting bill – but that relies on a higher level of trust in Republican actions than I’m comfortable with. Just get these sessions over with already.

Runoff coming in HD118

Oct 3rd, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

You’ll be hearing more about this soon enough.

Leo Pacheco

Republican John Lujan and Democrat Frank Ramirez are advancing to a special election runoff to fill the seat of former state Rep. Leo Pacheco, D-San Antonio, a seat the GOP is eager to flip as it looks to gain new ground in South Texas.

With all vote centers reporting Tuesday night, Lujan was getting 42% of the vote, while Ramirez was receiving 20%, according to unofficial returns. Democrat Desi Martinez, a lawyer, was in third with 18%, followed by Democrat Katie Farias, a local school board member, at 12%. The other Republican on the ballot — Adam Salyer, the 2020 nominee for the seat — finished last at 9%.

The district, anchored in the South Side of San Antonio, is Democratic-friendly, though Republicans believe they have a shot at capturing it as they seek to capitalize on President Joe Biden’s underperformance across South Texas last year.

[…]

The Texas Democratic Party urged party unity for the runoff — and wasted little time painting a contrast with Lujan.

“While Frank has proven himself as a committed voice for working people across San Antonio, our opponent John Lujan has consistently shown that he will toe the party line of the Texas GOP — even as Texas Republicans throw San Antonio in harm’s way,” party chair Gilberto Hinojosa said in a statement. “We cannot afford another state rep who will be complicit in Greg Abbott’s attacks.”

Lujan has run three times before in the district, the first time in a 2016 special election where he flipped the seat before losing the regular general election months later. Lujan was backed by Gov. Greg Abbott, House Speaker Dade Phelan and a number of deep-pocketed GOP groups, which have helped him raise more than double what the Democratic candidates combined raised.

Still, Lujan campaigned with a bipartisan appeal, leaning on his business experience and law enforcement background. He even said he supported Medicaid expansion, though he clearly lined up with his party on issues like abortion and gun rights.

Pacheco endorsed Ramirez to succeed him, as did Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff.

Ramirez is the former zoning and planning director for a San Antonio City Council member and before that, he was chief of staff to Pacheco’s predecessor in the seat, Tomas Uresti. At 27, Ramirez ran on the generational change he would bring to the seat and his already considerable experience in government.

For the record, Bexar County is not South Texas. Dems overall made gains across the board in Bexar County, though HD118 was on the low end of that. It would be slightly more Republican under the proposed new State House map, but still Democratic. It would be nice to not have a repeat of the 2016 runoff here, but in the end I expect this will be a Democratic seat when the 2023 Lege gavels in. Until then, look for a lot of money to be spent on this race. The Current has more.

The proposed State House map is out

Oct 1st, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

The last of the bunch.

Texas House members on Thursday released the first proposal for a new map redrawing the chamber’s 150-member districts. The initial draft would both increase Republicans’ strength across the state and the number of districts in which white residents make up a majority of eligible voters.

House Bill 1, authored by Corpus Christi Rep. Todd Hunter, the GOP chair of the House Redistricting Committee, is just the first draft, and it will likely change as it makes its way through the legislative process before it’s signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott.

The Texas Legislature is in the midst of its third special session. This one is dedicated to redrawing political maps based on the latest census data that showed people of color fueled 95% of Texas’ population growth over the past decade. The percent of Hispanics is now nearly equal to white people in Texas.

But, the new map creates fewer districts where Black and Hispanic people make up a majority of eligible voters. Black and Hispanic Texans make up two racial groups that along with Asian Texans outpaced the growth of white residents in the state over the last decade.

Currently 83 of the chamber’s 150 districts are areas in which white residents make up a majority of eligible voters; 33 are districts where Hispanic voters make up the majority, while Black residents are the majority of eligible voters in seven districts.

Under the new proposal, the map adds six more districts where white residents make up the majority of eligible voters while the number of Hispanic and Black districts would each drop by three.

The proposed map would also change the partisan breakdown among the 150 districts, tilting the scale toward Republicans.

Currently, there are 76 districts that went to former President Donald Trump during the 2020 general election while 74 went to President Joe Biden. Among those, 50 districts voted 60% or more for Trump, — indicating the district is safely Republican — while 40 districts had more than 60% support for Biden — indicating strong Democratic support. Under the proposed new map, 86 districts would have gone for Trump, while 64 would have went for Biden. The number of districts that voted 60% or more for Trump or Biden would be tied at 46.

All the data for this plan is here, and the current State House map is here. I wrote about the other maps here: SBOE, State Senate (updated), Congress. For a good initial look at the partisan breakdowns and who is getting paired with whom, see Patrick Svitek and Derek Ryan. Note that Ryan uses a different formula to calculate the partisan strength of a district; by hit metric, Dems would be favored in 65, not 64 of them.

Couple of thoughts and observations:

– Harris County remains with 24 districts, not 25 as it had in 2001-2011. El Paso goes from having five full districts to four full districts plus a piece of HD74. Fort Bend gains a district, Travis gains a piece of the very Republican HD19; that district number used to be in east Texas, held by Rep. James White who is going for a promotion, and is now split into multiple other districts. Denton goes from four full districts to four plus a partial, while Collin goes from four plus a partial to five plus a partial; HD57 moves from east Texas to Denton, HD60 moves from west-ish Texas to Collin. HD76 moves from El Paso to Fort Bend.

– Rep. Erin Zwiener, whose HD45 had been Hays plus Blanco counties, is now shown in the very Republican HD73, which is Comal plus a piece of Hays; the new HD45, shown as having no incumbent at this time, is the rest of Hays. It’s also pretty Democratic, and I’d guess Rep. Zwiener will be househunting soon, if there are no changes to this piece of the map.

– Rep. Ryan Guillen’s HD31 was already the most Trumpy Dem-held district, and it’s the most Republican district held by a Dem, followed by Rep. James Talarico’s HD52. There’s one Republican-held district that now shows as clearly blue, and that’s Rep. Jeff Cason’s HD92 in Tarrant County. Not sure what he did to anger the redistricting gods.

– On a personal note, the Heights has been reunited in one district, HD145, after a decade of being split between HDs 145 and 148. I need to check this for the Senate map as well, to see if the SD06/SD15 dichotomy is still there.

– I’m sure there will be changes to this map, and as the story notes there are some unhappy Republicans; it’s nearly impossible to satisfy everyone, and the needs of the many etc etc etc. For what it’s worth, using Derek Ryan’s metrics, there are 18 districts where the Republican vote is between 40 and 50 percent, and 31 districts with the Republican vote between 50 and 60 percent. Nearly all of the latter are in the places that have been trending Democratic – Harris, Dallas, Bexar, Collin, Denton, etc. A few of the former include South Texas districts that went the other way in 2020, but most of the rest are like the first group. I’ve said many times that the Republicans had to decide what their risk appetite was, and they have. If the current trends don’t at least slow down for them, this could really blow up on them.

I’m sure they’re aware of that, and they have a plan, or at least a hope, to hold on to enough of what they have to stave off disaster. All of this is without addressing the obvious racial inequities in the map, of which I’m sure we’ll hear plenty as the lawsuits begin to get filed. It’s never boring at this time of the decade, that’s for sure.

A little sandbagging from the SOS on the fraudit

Sep 30th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

Who’s running this show?

In the five days since the Texas secretary of state’s office announced it is auditing the 2020 general election in four counties, local officials indicated they were in the dark about what the reviews would entail.

Now, they’ve learned they cover some of the standard post-election procedures local officials are already required to undertake.

On Tuesday night, the state agency that oversees elections offered the first glimpse of what it has dubbed a “full forensic audit” of the election in Harris, Dallas, Tarrant and Collin counties, but it appears the scope of the effort may be more limited than what the term may suggest. The secretary of state’s documentation explaining the parameters of the reviews notes the first phase includes partial manual counts of ballots and security assessments, which all counties are already required to undergo.

The second phase, which is slated for “spring 2022,” will be an examination of election records “to ensure election administration procedures were properly followed.” That includes reviews of records of voting machine accuracy tests, rosters for early voting, forms detailing chain of custody for sealed ballot boxes and other election materials maintained by the counties.

But the secretary of state also indicates it will review records that counties already provide to the office, including the “reasonable impediment declarations” filled out by voters who indicate they lack one of the photo IDs the state requires voters to present to cast a ballot.

[…]

Officials in Harris County on Tuesday morning indicated they remained unaware of what the audits would cover despite comments by Abbott that the reviews “actually began months ago.” Now, it appears the governor was, at least in part, referring to processes counties are separately required by law to complete.

For example, the partial manual counts of ballots listed under the first phase of the reviews must be conducted within 72 hours of polls closing after every single election.

The reviews also provoked criticism that invoked the politically driven election review in Arizona that has been mired by ineptitude and described by the Arizona secretary of state as an exercise plagued by “problematic practices, changing policies, and security threats.” The report of the Arizona review, which confirmed President Joe Biden won the state, was compiled by Cyber Ninjas, a contractor that received $5.7 million from pro-Trump groups to fund the audit.

In releasing the details about the reviews, a spokesman for the secretary of state emphasized the office would not be “hiring or contracting with an outside firm to conduct these audits.”

See here and here for the background. I guess it’s good that we’re not throwing millions of dollars at a bunch of pro-Trump grifters who will come in and do a lot of damage, but the word for all this is still “pathetic”. If the purpose was to take these existing actions and package them as a true fraudit, so as to appease their god-king, it didn’t work.

Gov. Greg Abbott is failing to appease some inside his party — including former President Donald Trump — with the “forensic election audit” that the state announced Thursday.

Trump released a letter to Abbott on Thursday urging him to add audit legislation, which could allow a review of mail-in and in-person ballots across the state, to the agenda for the current special session agenda. Instead, the secretary of state’s office announced later that day that it was already starting to audit the 2020 election results in four of the state’s biggest counties.

In a new statement to The Texas Tribune on Wednesday, Trump said it is “a big mistake for Texas” not to pass the audit legislation, House Bill 16 by Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands.

“By allowing the Democrats to do what they do, it will make it much harder for the Governor and other Republicans to win election in 2022 and into the future,” Trump said. “Texas is a much redder state than anyone knows, but this is the way to make sure it turns blue.”

Trump assumes, with quite a bit of justification, that he can get Abbott to roll over and supplicate himself further. There’s only one reasonable response to this.

A resolution from Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo denouncing the election audits for 2020 election results in four large Texas counties passed Tuesday night 3 to 2, with Democrats in favor and Republicans against.

Hidalgo has called the audit, which centers on Harris, Dallas, Tarrant and Collin counties, a “sham” and a political maneuver to fuel conspiracy theorists who keep pushing the false narrative that Donald Trump won the 2020 election.

[…]

Harris County Commissioner Tom Ramsey was one of the two Republicans who voted against the resolution Tuesday night, arguing “transparency is not a bad thing.”

A few days prior to the resolution, Hidalgo warned continuing the conversation around election results “lends some credence” to conspiracy theories that fraud exists.

“These are the kinds of folks that stormed the capital. They are not going to be persuaded that their conspiracy theories are false,” Hidalgo said in a Sunday Twitter video. “It can’t be that the strategy of one party is to burn it all to the ground when their candidate doesn’t win. That’s how you tear down a country, that’s how you tear down a democracy.”

Lina Hidalgo is a strong and competent leader. Greg Abbott is not. And Tom Ramsey is as much a disgrace as Abbott is. Draw him out of his undeserved position, y’all.

Initial Senate and SBOE maps approved by committee

Sep 29th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Still a lot of changes likely to come.

A panel of lawmakers on Tuesday advanced draft maps of the Texas Senate and State Board of Education, sending both to the full upper chamber for further debate.

The maps, both authored by state Sen. Joan Huffman, a Houston Republican who leads the Senate Special Redistricting Committee, will likely see further changes before the Legislature sends them to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk for the signature. The initial drafts of both maps have so far attempted to strengthen Republican majorities by protecting incumbents and creating more GOP-friendly districts.

Senate Bill 4, the draft of the Senate’s 31 district map, was tweaked by lawmakers before the chamber’s redistricting committee approved it along a 12-2 vote.

One of the more notable changes, offered in amendments by Huffman, involved Senate District 10, which is represented by state Sen. Beverly Powell, D-Burleson. In the latest draft, the district — which is currently contained in Tarrant County and voted for President Joe Biden during the 2020 general election — was redrawn to include parts of the more conservative Parker and Johnson counties as well as other GOP-leaning surrounding areas in the state. The Senate’s first draft would have included parts of Tarrant County along with Parker and Johnson counties.

After that first draft was released, Powell argued that the proposed map would be “a direct assault on the voting rights of minority citizens in Senate District 10 and, if adopted, it would be an act of intentional discrimination.” At the time, Powell said the latest census data showed that her district’s population was already “nearly ideal” — but on Tuesday, Huffman said that neighboring districts had to also be accounted for before emphasizing that her proposals had been “drafted blind to racial data.”

Another change before Tuesday’s vote involved Senate Districts 22 and 23, which are represented by state Sens. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, and Royce West, D-Dallas, respectively. The amendment, authored by West but laid out by state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, would swap several precincts between the two districts, including some in Tarrant County from Senate District 22 to 23. Zaffirini said the move would keep both districts within the acceptable population deviation.

See here for the background on the Senate maps. You can see the initial map here and the committee substitute map that was approved here, with more data on the plan here. SD10, which as noted goes from having some of Tarrant plus all of Parker and Johnson to having some of Tarrant, some of Parker, all of Johnson and all of a few smaller counties west of there, is the main difference. As noted, the House still gets to have input – by tradition, each chamber gets first crack at its own map – so expect further changes.

In addition, there may be some complaints from unexpected places.

Montgomery County commissioners urged the Texas Legislature to reconsider the proposed redrawing of state congressional maps that would dilute the county’s conservative representation by adding a third senate district.

County Judge Mark Keough said he traveled to Austin last week to express the county’s “disapproval” of the redistricting plan.

[…]

Currently, Keough explained, Montgomery County has two senate districts. However, the proposed changes would add a third district that would divide Magnolia and extend Harris County districts into Montgomery County.

“We are deeply concerned about this as we move forward,” Keough said.

The story keeps talking about the Congressional map while these MoCo folks are whining about the Senate map; it’s annoying and confusing. The current Senate map has SDs 03 and 04 in Montgomery, while the new maps move SD03 out and move pieces of SDs 07 and 17 in, to bolster those incumbents from the ravages of a bluer Harris County. Their complaints had no effect on the committee, but there’s still time for them to make a case to the rest of the Lege.

Back to the Trib story:

The committee unanimously approved the draft of the State Board of Education map on Tuesday, without amendments. The board is a 15-member, majority Republican body that determines what millions of public school students in the state are taught in classrooms. Nine Republicans and six Democrats currently sit on the board.

The current version of that map did not make any changes to the racial breakdown of the board’s 15 districts — based on eligible voters, Hispanic residents make up a majority in three of those districts, 10 districts with white majorities and two have no majority.

See here for the background on the SBOE map, whose demographic breakdown makes no sense to me, but here we are. Maybe this time it will be part of the inevitable litigation.

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