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December 22nd, 2021:

Precinct analysis: The new SBOE map

Dec 22nd, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
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Previously: New State House map, New Congressional map

I probably care more about the SBOE than most normal people do. It’s not that powerful an entity, there are only 15 seats on it, and their elections go largely under the radar. But the potential for shenanigans is high, and Democrats had about as good a shot at achieving a majority on that board as they did in the State House in 2020. Didn’t work out, and the new map is typically inhospitable, but we must keep trying. And if this nerdy political blog doesn’t care about the SBOE, then what’s even the point?

You can find the 2012 election results here and the 2020 results here. I didn’t use the 2016 results in my analysis below, but that data is here if you want to see it. 


Dist   Obama   Romney Obama%Romney%     Biden    Trump Biden% Trump%
====================================================================
01   247,686  187,075  56.2%  42.4%   378,468  283,822  56.3%  42.2%
02   228,834  185,412  54.6%  44.2%   291,278  291,716  49.4%  49.4%
03   264,311  232,068  52.5%  46.1%   388,240  305,696  55.1%  43.4%
04   308,644  120,097  71.2%  27.7%   403,177  148,981  72.2%  26.7%
05   300,483  239,166  53.8%  42.8%   570,541  301,308  64.1%  33.8%
06   181,278  386,445  31.5%  67.1%   368,830  466,577  43.5%  55.0%
07   224,393  362,617  37.8%  61.1%   340,566  472,253  41.3%  57.3%
08   176,409  303,391  36.3%  62.4%   298,068  395,563  42.4%  56.3%
09   199,415  406,195  32.5%  66.3%   283,337  493,792  36.0%  62.7%
10   169,390  393,365  29.6%  68.6%   303,528  543,023  35.2%  63.0%
11   190,589  395,936  32.0%  66.5%   340,611  492,562  40.2%  58.2%
12   189,192  408,110  31.2%  67.3%   370,022  505,840  41.6%  56.8%
13   335,799  130,847  71.2%  27.7%   441,894  151,002  73.5%  25.1%
14   165,093  377,319  30.0%  68.5%   316,606  503,706  38.0%  60.4%
15   126,093  440,745  21.9%  76.7%   162,347  533,181  23.0%  75.5%

You can see the new map here, so you can visualize where these districts are. The current and soon-to-be-obsolete map is here, and my analysis of the 2020 election under that map is here.

You might note that none of the new districts look all that crazy. For the most part, the districts encompass entire counties. It’s mostly a matter of which counties are joined together. A good example of that is SBOE12, which used to be Collin County plus a slice of Dallas. In the days when Collin was deep red, that was more than enough for it to be safe Republican, but now that Collin is trending heavily Democratic – SBOE12 was a four-point win for Joe Biden last year – that won’t do. Now SBOE12 is a sprawling district that still has all of Collin but now a smaller piece of Dallas, the top end of Denton, and a bunch of smaller North Texas counties that had previously been in districts 09 and 15. In return, the formerly all-rural district 9 picks up about a quarter of Dallas, in a mirror of the strategy we’ve seen in the other maps to put heavily Democratic urban areas in with deeply Republican rural ones, to neutralize the former. District 11, which had previously been pieces of Dallas and Tarrant plus all of Parker and is now all of that plus Hood and Somervell and part of Johnson counties, is another example.

The other strategy that we see echoes of here is the more careful placement of dark red suburban counties. SBOE6, which used to be entirely within Harris County, is now hiked up a bit north to include a generous piece of Montgomery County, much as was done with CD02 and SD07, to flip it from being a Biden district back to a Trump district. Ironically, this has the effect of making SBOE8, which used to have all of Montgomery plus a lot of the counties east of Harris, more Democratic as it now wears both the eastern and western ends of Harris like earflaps. (Mutton chops also come to mind as I look at the map.) SBOE8 also picks up a piece of bright blue Fort Bend County, which had previously been in district 7. Meanwhile, over in Central Texas, SBOE5 jettisoned Comal County after it could no longer keep that district red; Comal wound up in district 10, which excised all of its Travis County population in return.

As far as the numbers go, there’s not much to say. Whether Democrats can win five or six districts will depend in the short term on whether they can hold district 2, which is actually a bit more Democratic in this alignment. In the longer term, districts 6, 8, 11, and 12 could all become competitive. District 3 is no more Democratic than any of those are Republican, but as you can see it trended a bit more blue over the decade, and it’s anchored in Bexar County, which should keep it from falling. 2022 is the one year when every district is up for re-election, and that will tell us something about how the trends we saw in 2020 are going. Maybe we’ll need to re-evaluate the prospects for change in this map, or as we’ve said before, maybe we’ll end up cursing the evil genius of it all. I mean, even as SBOE6 moved strongly towards Dems, the deficit to make up is still 100K votes. Nothing is going to come easy, if it comes at all.

From the “Keeping track of all these lawsuits is hard” department

Dec 22nd, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
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Spotted on Democracy Docket:

Still the only voter ID anyone should need

Today, a judge for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas denied a motion to dismiss Vote.org v. Callanen. The case, filed earlier this summer, challenges Texas’ “wet signature” law that requires individuals who submit their registration applications electronically or through fax to also provide a copy of their application with their signature — meaning signed with pen on paper. The complaint argues that this law unduly burdens the right to vote and targets voting advocacy groups such as Vote.org in violation of the First and 14th Amendments and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and asks the court to prohibit its enforcement. The court already rejected one attempt to dismiss the case earlier this fall.

The court also rejected a motion to dismiss the case filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) that was joined by two county elections administrators. The motion claimed that Vote.org did not have standing to bring this case and that its complaint was insufficient. The court held that Vote.org had sufficiently shown that the wet signature law would cause harm to the organization’s efforts to register voters and the court may be able to provide the requested relief. The court also rejected the defendants’ arguments that there was no private right of action to sue and the plaintiffs’ claim fails because they did not allege any racial discrimination, finding that neither argument was supported by precedent. The case will move forward and all claims will be litigated to determine if the wet signature law is constitutional and in line with federal law.

My first reaction when I see something like this is to search through my archives for any past blog posts about it. Usually there is something, even in cases where I don’t immediately recognize the issue. I know I’ve heard of this lawsuit before, and sure enough I land on this post, about a federal lawsuit filed in San Antonio by a group including Vote.org over the state of Texas’ rejection of voter registration applications that did not include an “original signature” but instead an electronic one. But that lawsuit was filed in January of 2020, and this one was filed earlier this summer, in response to a bill passed during the regular session. I can’t find any further posts about the January 2020 lawsuit, and I seem to not have blogged about the one from this July. Oops.

My best guess here is that the initial lawsuit was dismissed for some reason – I can’t find any reference to it on the Democracy Docket webpage – and the July one was filed partly in response to the reasons the original one was tossed. I note that the first lawsuit had several other plaintiffs (the DCCC, the DSCC, and the TDP), while this one just has Vote.org associated with it. Or maybe it was withdrawn for some reason, with the same logic behind Lawsuit #2. If somehow that first lawsuit were still in existence, I would assume that it has been or will be combined with this one. Since I don’t see that on the lawsuit webpage (where you can see the original complaint plus two followup documents), I go back to my first assumption, that the 2020 lawsuit is no more. If someone reading this knows how to search for these things in the federal court system, please let me know if I’m mistaken in that.

Anyway. The point here is that allowing electronic signatures, which are common in all kinds of other legal transactions, would make it a lot easier to do voter registration. Which, of course, the state of Texas does not want. Note that the bill in question was a large one that did a lot of things – the initial text is all about recounts, and at first I thought this must have been the wrong legislation – but the “original signature” provision is in there later on. It was passed with bipartisan support, and I will just have to ask someone about it, because there must have been some good things in there for that to have happened. Be that as it may, we’ll see where this lawsuit goes.

Apparently, we’re still litigating whether Texas Central is a railroad

Dec 22nd, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

I admit, I’m a bit confused by this.

The Texas attorney general’s office has put its weight behind a landowner’s case against the companies developing a controversial Dallas-Houston bullet train, arguing they can’t force people to sell parcels needed for the high-speed rail project.

Weighing in on the matter at the invitation of the Texas Supreme Court, the attorney general’s office offered the latest twist in the nearly decade-long fight over a 240-mile line that would connect Dallas and Houston. While the project has picked up support from leaders of urban areas, it’s encountered hard resistance from residents of the rural counties on its proposed path.

One of those residents, Leon County landowner James Miles, sued Texas Central after the private company sought permission to survey his 600-acre property in 2015 as part of its efforts to examine the land for the project. Miles asked the courts to declare that the company did not have the right to enter his property because it does not have the eminent domain authority granted to railroad companies.

He won at a trial court, but the legal dispute reached the Texas Supreme Court after a state appellate court in Corpus Christi sided with Texas Central and a related company.

In a legal brief filed with the Texas Supreme Court on Friday, deputies for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton argued the high court should reverse that appellate decision and rule in Miles’ favor because the companies fall short of the Texas Constitution’s definition of a rail company.

“The [companies] may only make preliminary examinations and surveys of private landowners’ properties for the purpose of constructing and operating a bullet train if they are either railroad companies or interurban electric railway companies,” the state wrote in its brief. “In the State’s view, the [companies] are neither.”

That leaves them with “no authority to enter, examine, survey or condemn Miles’ land,” the state wrote.

I am confused because at last report, the Supreme Court had declined to review that 13th Court of Appeals’ verdict. I Am Not A Lawyer, but right there in the story that I blogged about was the clear suggestion that this was the end of the road for that case. However, now that I see this story, a bit of googling shows that the Supreme Court granted a motion for a rehearing, which you can see here. It doesn’t seem to me that any new issues were raised by the Miles plaintiff, but what do I know? In any event, this explains why the AG brief says it is in response to “the Court’s letter of October 15, 2021 inviting the Solicitor General to express the views of the State of Texas”. Oral arguments for this are set for January 11. If any of you lawyers out there want to shed some extra light on this, by all means please be my guest.

COVID puts NHL on pause

Dec 22nd, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

A bit of an ominous throwback.

The NHL is beginning a leaguewide shutdown Wednesday amid a rise in positive COVID-19 test results among players, and with 10 of the league’s 32 teams’ schedules already paused and their facilities closed.

The league announced Monday night that it will open its annual holiday break two days earlier than scheduled and have it run through Saturday. The decision, reached in coordination with the NHL Players’ Association, means five additional games scheduled for Thursday will be postponed, bringing the total this season to 49.

Two games slated for Tuesday are still set to go on as scheduled. Teams will then report back for COVID-19 testing and practice on Sunday, a day before games are set to resume. Players and members of each team’s traveling party will be required to test negative before being allowed back in their respective facilities.

The decision to begin the break early comes a day after the NHL and NHLPA issued a joint statement announcing they were attempting to avoid a leaguewide shutdown by making decisions on a team-by-team basis. The holiday break was previously supposed to run from Friday to Sunday.

Of the 49 games postponed, 44 have occurred over the past two weeks with the delta and omicron variants spreading across North America.

The story notes that about 15% of players are in virus protocol, which is a lot! Of course, when one player gets exposed, it’s easy for many others to be exposed as well. It’s big enough that NHL players will withdraw from the Olympics, which is a smart move for the league and bad news for anyone looking forward to Olympic hockey.

Meanwhile, the NBA is hoping to avoid a similar fate.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said Tuesday that there are “no plans” to pause the season, even as numbers of players entering the league’s health and safety protocols related to the coronavirus continues to rise.

Silver, in an interview with ESPN, said the league has examined multiple options but does not yet see a reason to stop play. Through early Tuesday evening, at least 84 players from 20 teams — not including some coaches and staffers — were believed to be in the protocols, though those numbers tend to change almost on an hourly basis. The count is largely based on what teams have disclosed on their most recent injury report.

“Frankly, we’re having trouble coming up with what the logic would be behind pausing right now,” Silver said. “As we look through these cases literally ripping through the country right now, putting aside the rest of the world, I think we’re finding ourselves where we sort of knew we were going to get to for the past several months — and that is that this virus will not be eradicated and we’re going to have to learn to live with it. That’s what we’re experiencing in the league right now.”

[…]

The NBA has postponed seven games so far this season, but none from Wednesday onward yet. Some of the teams scheduled to play on Saturday have numerous players and coaches in the league’s health and safety protocols right now; the Nets currently have 10 players on that list, which is the highest known figure for any team.

The league is allowing teams to sign replacements to hardship contracts when a player tests positive for the virus, with hopes such moves can minimize the need for postponements.

They have been shifting some game times around and may do more of that on Saturday – if your Christmas tradition involves a daylong basketball binge, you might want to check nba.com for the latest updates before tuning in.

Even with the games going on, there’s a real effect on the teams, as new players are being shuffled in to replace those who are sidelined. The NFL had two Tuesday night games yesterday, both COVID postponements, but with the Washington team starting a quarterback who had been signed off of the Patriots’ practice squad three days before. At a macro level, they’re making it work, but on a team-by-team and game-by-game basis, there’s more than a little ridiculousness to it all.

Not yet on the menu, as the Hang Up And Listen podcast discussed: Playing before empty stadia again. All these leagues have very highly vaccinated teams and team staffs, but for sure the same is not true for the fans. I seriously doubt there’s much appetite for this step, especially after the revenue losses from last season, but big crowds are exactly what we don’t need right now. Unless local governments do something, that’s what we’re going to get. Make better decisions, y’all. ESPN has more.

UPDATE: I should have also mentioned that European soccer leagues, especially the English Premier League, are also dealing with major COVID issues right now.