Austin has been robbed of a representitive

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

This new and final map the governor just signed is completely warped. See for yourselves http://www.tlc.state.tx.us/research/redist/redist.htm

My county, Travis, is now divided among three snakelike districts even though the county is about the same size as a district. One of the snakes, I mean districts, goes a few hunded miles south from East Austin all the way to freaking McAllen! The damn thing is sometimes about 10 miles wide. Oddly enough I now share a district with my parents, who live 3 hours away in Houston!

#2

And despite Tom DeLay’s presence in Texas during all of this, the federal government swears up and down it has nothing to do with any of this.

The Democrats have sold us out.

#3

The Dems fought as long as they could. The problems is, I don’t think the majority of people in Texas pay enough attention to why they kept leaving the state and only look at the cost of additional special sessions.

At least my State Senator Bill Ratliff, a Republican, voted against this travesty. I’ve voiced my reasons for despising this new map before. I fear for the future of the Caddo.

#4

Well, since I have nothing to add about the Gerrymandering, and since our good friend Homebrew posted last, I would like to note that I found a really cool beer supply place in Austin and have decided to start getting my mail/web-order stuff from them.

Placed my first order today, I did. Got tired of the shit-like service at the local joint. Hope this works out.

Good luck down there!

#5

Why is this gerrymander bad? Were you upset when the Democrats did their gerrymander, or are Democratic gerrymanders OK?

#6

This gerrymander is bad because it happens to drastically affect the way my area is represented. Now it will be very hard for someone from Austin to be elected. Austin will likely be represented by someone form the hillcountry, someone from suburban nw houston, and someone from the valley. I suppose this is payback for Doggett’s Iraq vote. Also the Democrats at least waited 10 years to gerrymander their districts. Just look at the new map and then compare it to the old one. If you can’t see something fishy then I can’t help you.

By the way I am not a Democrat, but this is certainly pushing me to vote Democratic next election.

#7

I’m worried about this redistricting because of the precident it will create.

Take my words for it: If this succeeds, the minute either of those parties takes complete control of a state, they’re going to gerrymander. Don’t be immature enough to think that your party wouldn’t do it, either.

#8

I never said I thought that. They probibly would. Which is exactly why it shouldn’t be done in the first place.

#9

Is there some solution to drawing voting districts? It’s pretty screwed up in most places.

#10

“What’s good for the goose is good for the gerrymander.”

Politicians who are shocked, SHOCKED at what the other party is doing will do exactly the same when their turn comes around. Let’s face it, gerrymandering is just what parties in power DO.

#11

I don’t dispute that parties in power will tend to redraw lines in such a way as to maintain or increase that power. What I don’t ever recall hearing before is a party which was not in power when the lines were drawn and approved by a federal court going in and forcing a redrawing of those lines two years later, when reapportionment is only done once every ten years. Nor do I recall it’s ever being done at the behest of a federal representative of that party. If you can point me to an example of a Democratic representative spearheading multiple irregular redistricting attempts (IIRC the same thing was/is being tried in Colorado) working through the governor of that state to call special session after special session, imposing draconian fines and punishments on those who use the only weapon they have open to them to stop it (taking away their parking spacees? That’s just petty), because they decide that the lines ought to reflect the way they think the state should have voted a year ago but didn’t? Even more disgusting than the hijacking of the districts was the rationale behind it. More people vote Republican, therefore the Republican Party deserves more seats in Congress. Bullshit! You “deserve” as many seats as you can win through a fair and honest electoral process. If a Republican loses to a Democrat in a majority Democrat district, the Republicans no more “deserve” that seat than do the Libertarians or the Greens or the Bull Fucking Moose parties.

I hope a judge gets ahold of this and strikes it down faster than goose shit goes through a tin horn. Too bad there’s probably not a way to put the Texas Republicans in jail for stealing districts they couldn’t win fair and square.

#12

There is no legal requirement that reapportionment be done only every ten years, and district bounderies have often been tweeked between major revisions. I don’t recall hearing of a wholesale reapportionment being done between the decenial reapportionments, but there is nothing in the law to prevent it from taking place.

The nominal justification for the Texas action is that the plan which had been put into place two years ago was imposed by the courts (because the Legislature could not reach agreement), and that it preserved the Democratic gerrymander from ten years before.

Of course, the REAL justification is that the Texas Republicans managed to get together enough votes to be able to push through their own gerrymander, but with stunts like all the Democrats leaving the state to deny a quorum it is hard to muster much sympathy for either side.

The courts have historically been reluctant to strike down reapportionment plans for partisan gerrymandering (as opposed to gerrymandering for racial purposes). Of course, no one can tell what a particular court will do in a particular case, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up…

#13

[Nelson]HA-ha![/Nelson]

First off, I’m neither Dem nor Rep. My opinion on this and almost every other district map throughout the US is: Sure it’s gerrymandered! For over a century the Democrats in Texas have gerrymandered the districts to their advantage, and now they’re boo-hooing that it’s being done to them. How f***ing ironic. So really, GQ, it’s not setting any “precedent”. It’s been done before and it’s being done again.

Now, two wrongs does not make a right and sure, I can see that the Republicans’ map is an injustice to some people. The thing is, the previous version was an injustice to other people. Both versions have districts that snake around all over the place. In fact, it is probably impossible to come up with a “totally fair” version anyway. So live with it. I’m in Texas and all I see is they’re drawing some new map to sidle me with some new representative that doesn’t represent me worth a crap, and I’ll just live with it because there really ain’t much I can do about it.

#14

Any gerrymander is bad. I looked at the redview map of the state and saw two things: squares, and little vortices. Let me describe this vortices, they are composed of 6 or 8 little snaky portions in circular areas. Where are these devilish things? That’s right, every single metropolitan area. They’re not even being sly about it. What a slap in the face.