The Chron picks up the story.
Two Galveston residents and a constable are asking the Texas Supreme Court to stop the county from using a newly redistricted map in the November general election,
They argued in an emergency petition that that because a different map was used in the primary election, the county’s actions violate equal protection and the election code — and set a bad precedent for the rest of the state.
Lawyers for Precinct 3 Constable Derreck Rose and county residents Wilma Green and Diane Merchant filed the emergency petition for writ of mandamus, which is a type of legal remedy that asks a higher court to order a public official to correct an abuse of discretion. The Justice Department has called this type of petition an “extraordinary remedy, which should only be used in exceptional circumstances of peculiar emergency or public importance.”
“If this is not stopped, the precedent set will be horribly damaging to democracy,” the petition states. “It will make Texas’s primary elections an empty exercise. The voters’ choices just cast aside on the whim of the government—the 4 very governmental officials on the ballot in the ongoing election. If polling against their general election opponent is looking bad, they can just change the map—up to the very eve of the election—to evade the voters’ judgment.”
[…]
The post-primary redistricting also means a chunk of voters didn’t get to vote, or run as a candidate, in the primary for the new precinct the recent map has left them in, the emergency petition claims. Galveston County has staggered elections, and as a result, residents who voted in the primary but have now been moved to a precinct that isn’t having an election this year will not be able to vote until 2028. The petitioners argue that consequence violates equal protection.
In a response to the petition, lawyers for Galveston County argued the petitioners misinterpreted the state constitution and election code. The county’s lawyers argued mid-cycle redistricting doesn’t violate state election code, and that those filing the emergency petition don’t have a valid reason to ask the state supreme court to intervene because redistricting isn’t illegal.
“Texas Constitution expressly authorizes precinct redivision ‘from time to time,’ which necessarily includes periods between elections unless otherwise limited,” lawyers for the county wrote in their response. “No statute restricts the authority to redistrict commissioner, justice of the peace or constable precinct boundaries to a particular time period.”
The new 2026 maps have effectively switched the precincts of the Precinct three Justice of Peace and the Precinct 4 Justice of Peace. Galveston County’s lawyers stated in their response that the plan is to have the Precinct 4 Justice of the Peace, Republican Kathleen McCumber, who is not up for reelection in November, finish the last two years of her term in Precinct 3. The Precinct 3 Justice of the Peace, Billy Williams, who ran unopposed in the Democratic Primary, will now run in the general election for Precinct 4, Galveston County’s response says.
The county’s lawyers called petitioners’ interpretation of election code inflexible and gave hypothetical examples: For example, if a natural disaster occurred between the primary and general election, and as a result the population changes, the county would have to redraw precinct boundaries ahead of the general election, the county argued.
See here for the background. A version of the “some voters won’t get to vote in that race this year” argument was argued before and rejected by the Supreme Court. This is different, in that the earlier plaintiffs were trying to prevent a map from being used in a primary, but we’ll see if that’s a material difference. The response from the defendants is both confounding – this isn’t mid-decade redistricting, it’s post-primary redistricting, where there’s a good argument that no one voted for these candidates to be the nominees – and insulting – are we really comparing this to, say, a hypothetical situation in which Ebola or an earthquake or space invaders have wiped out half the people of the county? And if that happened would rebalancing the precinct/district populations be a priority? Is this in fact covered somewhere in the law, or in a past court case? Either Joe Nixon was hitting the bong when he wrote this, or they’re so convinced they have this in the bag that they’re not even bothering to justify it. The mind boggles.
And we don’t have an answer yet.
The Texas Supreme Court Friday denied an emergency effort to stop Galveston County from using newly drawn voting districts in the November election, allowing the Republican-led county’s unprecedented post-primary map switch to move forward for now.
The pro-voting plaintiffs filed an emergency motion with the Texas 14th Court of Appeals later that night.
The Supreme Court denied a petition from Galveston County officials and candidates Derreck Rose, Wilma Green and Diane Merchant, who asked the state’s highest court to block the county from implementing new district lines after voters had already selected candidates under a different map in the March primary. The plaintiffs filed their original emergency petition Aug. 4.
The court did not decide whether Galveston County’s maneuver is legal. Instead, it held that the plaintiffs must first take their challenge to a lower court.
“The petition for writ of mandamus is denied without prejudice and without regard to the merits of Relators’ arguments,” the court wrote. “The matter should first be presented to a lower court.”
The phrase “without prejudice” means the plaintiffs are not barred from bringing their claims again after seeking relief from a lower court, which they did in a late Friday night emergency refiling.
And so we wait some more. Let’s hope the 14th Court of Appeals acts quickly, because the clock is ticking.