I think it’s great. As long as there is no quorum then neither party can spend the taxpayer’s money. It could save Texas millions. The Republicans could run on the Pat Paulson campaign slogan: “If nominated I will not run, if elected I will not serve”.
Better taxation through non-representation.
Who will run away this time? 10 senators can run away without affecting the process. Do at least 50 house members have what it takes to leave the state for 30 days i.e., jobs that they won’t be fired from for taking a month-long vacation to who knows where (I guess it’s either Arkansas’s, Louisiana’s or Mexico’s turn).
I’m not sure we’ll see the quorum breaking tactic used again. I think they’ll play hardball in other ways. As I mentioned earlier, most of the maps proposed so far have serious flaws. I’d guess they’ll hammer the hell out of the maps and emphasize how much these extra sessions are costing the Texas taxpayers. Plus there are several people on the Republican side of the aisle who are getting pretty sick of the whole thing as well. I think party loyalty, for both sides, is seriously being tested here. I don’t think there is a single person in those legislative sessions who can honestly tell themselves that the work they are doing right now is the will of their constituents. All the evidence so far indicates that the people are not interested in redistricting. The motivation for both parties is coming from party HQ, and the representatives are being pressured to do something that even the most blindly partisan can see is not the express will of the people. That creates some serious stress on representatives. Even though most cynics agree that representatives are very rarely as concerned about their constituents as they are about their special interests, personal agendas, and party directives, continually being shown how unpopular your activities among the constituents has got to be stressful.
Enjoy,
Steven
The reason they want a redistricting is b/c last one was decided by a judge, not by the legislature of Texas. So it wasn’t really “agreed to” and they’re not doing it only on account of Tom Delay.
The last one was a Democrat gerrymander, so if you’re against this attempted gerrymander, that’s fine, but don’t say you’re doing it out of principle, b/c it’s merely an attempt to replace the Democrat gerrymander.
Don’t you think it odd that in a heavily Republican state that the Democrats have a large advantage in House seats? Why do you think that is?
Representatives aren’t supposed to “want” things. They are supposed to be expressions of what their constituents want. So far, in every channel the constituents have had to express their opinions, the people have said they don’t want to redistrict the state until after the next census. Quite frankly I, and many other Texas voters, are pretty annoyed with these continual special sessions to do something we honestly don’t give a damn about. I’m not happy about my tax dollars going to pay for another special session to fight over an issue which I feel shouldn’t be on the table at all.
I am further exasperated with the lying the Republican leadership is doing. Every time I turn around I hear “all we want is a fair map”, but every stinking map I’ve seen is anything but fair.
As to the current state of the districts being a Democratic gerrymander, I’m afraid I don’t accept that premise. I’ve asked for it to be proven, and no one has yet accepted that offer. If you’re interested I can present my arguement that the voting results do not match up with what one would expect from gerrymandered districts. Please note that it is not up to me to prove they are not gerrymandered, it is up to you to prove they are.
Two points. I’d like a cite for how many Texans are Republicans versus how many Texans are Democrats. You see, Texas doesn’t collect that type of information during voter registration, so I honestly don’t know if Texas is “heavily Republican”. I’d be interested in any data you have along these lines.
As for why there are more Democratic Congressmen than Republican, I consider that a result of split ticket voting. Split ticket voting explains the results quite well and is a simpler explination than a gerrymander. I consider split ticket voting to be the norm as people vote issues, name recognition, and personal charisma over party line. If you have evidence that most people in Texas vote straight ticket I’d be interested in that as well.
Enjoy,
Steven
Are you claiming the judge was acting as a partisan Democrat? Why do you think so?
That’s not true. I’ve spoken with numerous Texans who said they wanted redistricting. Numerous Texans do want redistricting. I realize that you’ve posted numbers showing the number of people who turned out to hearings on redistricting were heavily against, but I doubt the accuracy of those numbers, since I went to one hearing, and noone took my temperature on the issue. A better measure might be a poll (from the Dallas Morning News):
So it appears that more Texans oppose redistricting than support it, but the numbers are fairly close (within the margin of error of +/- 3%). But before you start huffing about Texas Republicans not following the will of the people, there’s also this from the same poll:
So the Oklahoma Dems aren’t exactly following the will of the people either. Yes, they may be following the will of their constituents, but so are the Republicans that favor redistricting. It seems everyone is doing what’s best for their own partisan allegiances.
You have yet to produce any evidence supporting this assertion. In fact, the opposite appears true. In the last election, 57% of Texans voted for Republican congressman, but fewer than half of the congressmen elected were Republicans. That’s evidence of gerrymandering. I don’t think the ratio of votes to elected people needs to be 1:1, but a 10% discrepancy is certainly fishy.
First, you’ve asserted that the districts are fair, so it is your burden to prove that assertion. Second, I would be interested to hear your argument that the districts are not gerrymandered (I’m currently undecided on the issue). Third, my previous statement that 57% voted for Republican congressmen but fewer than 50% were elected is some evidence of the fact that those districts were gerrymandered.
The last one drawn by the legislature (in the 1990s) was a Democratic gerrymander.
However, the map currently in effect was drawn by a 3-judge panel, and was not based on the previous map (from the Texas Attorney General’s Opinion on redistricting).
Is it your contention that there was a large percentage of pro-redistricting people who did not get to speak at the hearings? The results were so definitely one-sided(~90% against) that there would have had to been a TON of them to make it balance out to the kind of numbers your poll indicates. I haven’t heard about this. Any additional info you can offer beyond your own experience? It also may be well to note there is a difference between the multiple thousands who turned out to speak about redistricting in the hearings and a random 1000 who got called about the issue on the telephone. There are upsides and downsides to both methods of gauging public opinion. A person who just gets a phone call doesn’t have to get up and go down to the polling place to weigh in, so the poll would capture the people who would have stayed at home instead of taking the trouble to go to the polling place. OTOH it is more likely that the people who actually care about the issue would get off their butts and go down to the courthouse. I put more weight on the multiple rounds of statewide hearings led by both the house and senate subcommittees and the data gathered there(absent evidence of some sort of massive exclusion of voices like your own of course). YMMV
Don’t really care about public opinion on the Dem’s tactic. Quite frankly I think both parties are full of shit and I’d like little more than to put the empty-headed partisans on both sides of the issue into a matter/anti-matter injector system and invent warp drive.
Now, on to some substance. I did not assert the districts were fair. There are more positions in this discussion than “gerrymandered” and “fair”. There is also “unknown”. That’s where I am. I’m perfectly willing to hear evidence towards gerrymandering and I haven’t seen any that is convincing so far. My own research tends to show results which are not consistent with gerrymandering. I’ll get to that research in a minute. I’ve posted it here before and I’ll dig it up.
In the meantime I’d like to address your assertion that 57% of Texans voted for Republican congressmen and less than 50% of the Congressmen are Republican is evidence of gerrymandering. I’ve made this argument in other threads, but I reject this high-level analysis. Critical factors have been taken out of the equation when that number is bandied about. That analysis completely ignores issues, candidate charisma, name recognition, incumbents, voter turnout by district, and a host of other factors. Those are statewide numbers and these were local elections. I don’t think a reasonable analysis can factor out these items and still retain accuracy. When a voter goes to the polls in Texas they are voting for a specific candidate, not for some statewide average that the candidates will be elected based upon. Abstracting out these issues just doesn’t work. Perhaps there is a Republican majority in a district which elected a Democratic congressperson. What if the overriding reason was because that particular Republican was an odious prick with proven ties to organized crime? Does the fact that most of the district’s residents are Republicans make the Democratic representative illegitimate? He won his race by being a better candidate than his opponent. I’m afraid I don’t buy a single datapoint from a state-level analysis as evidence when determining if local elections are gerrymandered.
Now, as to my own research into the matter. This post summed it up fairly well although the exact situation I was replying to was slightly different.
Enjoy,
Steven
Mtgman, I think I must have been unclear. I agree that people could split their tickets. Many did (including me). But split ticket voting is not at issue here. I haven’t said that Texas is 57% Republican. I’ve said that 57% of the votes cast in the latest congressional election were for Republican congressmen. Some of those votes may have come from Democrats, and some may have come from Republicans. I have no idea what party affiliation the voters had, or who else they voted for. Regardless, when 57% of the people vote for Republican congressmen, you’d expect approximately 57% of the congressmen elected to be Republican. In fact, fewer than half of the elected congressmen were Republican.
This implicates gerrymandering because one of the tactics most commonly used is to group the opposition into high-concentration areas. You’ve already demonstrated that you understand that concept, so I won’t go into how it works.
Thanks for posting your analysis, but I don’t think it proves that the current maps are fair. You’ve looked at the number of races that were “close,” and the number that were unopposed. But that obviously doesn’t answer the question of how the Republicans had so many more votes than the Dems, but won fewer than half of the seats. Where did the votes go? You’ve also set your lines for analysis arbitrarily. Why is 10% the cutoff for close races? Why is “unopposed” the cutoff for blowouts? Instead, I’d be curious to know what was the average margin of victory for Reps vs. Dems.
As for your question of why the Reps didn’t run for all seats, I think the common-sense response is that they didn’t think they could win those seats. I don’t think the Reps are arguing that they should have won all the seats in the entire state. They’re just saying they should have won approximately 57% of the Congressional seats.
As for the number of people that spoke at the hearings, my point was that I don’t think that’s an accurate way to measure whether the people “want to redistrict the state until after the next census.” I think it may be an accurate measure of the feelings of the people that spoke at the hearings. But that’s not representative of the feelings of the people state-wide. You’ve measured fewer than 2500 people, all of whom are part of the distinct sub-group that wanted to testify on redistricting. I’d submit that that subgroup is neither random nor a representative sample of all Texans. The population of the State of Texas in 2001 was over 21,000,000. So yes, there are a TON of people that haven’t been measured, and whose opinions could go either way on the issue.
As a side note, it’s probably unfair to use the word “gerrymandering” here. The lines were drawn by a federal court, and were probably not drawn with an eye toward partisan results. However, they may be unfair. Again, I haven’t decided that the lines were drawn unfairly, or if it was just a statistical anomaly. And even if the lines lead to unfair results, it may be impractical or impossible to fix. But the results clearly were not the result of split ticket voting.
When half a million more folks vote for a Democrat Presidential candidate, you’d expect that candidate to be elected. 
I think the biggest factor in the last elections was inertia. Most(perhaps all, I don’t remember) of the sitting Democrats were incumbents. In fact, not a single congressional incumbent, of either party, lost a race in 2002. If the current map is unfair, I don’t think it had much, if any, influence on the elections.
I’m not quite sure how to better explain my objection to the 57% statewide total votes number. I’ve mentioned that this vote doesn’t take into account voter turnout in the various districts. A single candidate who ran a very vigorous campaign and got lots of voters to turn out in his district could cause such an imbalance. That doesn’t mean the other candidates didn’t deserve their wins. My district, district 30(comprised of South Dallas and the lower mid-cities between Dallas and Ft. Worth) has an incumbent by the name of Eddie Bernice Johnson. She is one of the most popular congressmen in the state. She won the last election by one of the largest margins in the entire race, over 50%. Her race was never really in doubt. The candidate who was fielded agianst her had absolutely no prayer. I know several people who didn’t bother to turn out at the polls because the match was a foregone conclusion. Similarly, in the races where the candidates were completely unopposed(three races in 2002, all Democrats), obviously there was no turnout for those candidates to figure into the total number of votes cast for congressmen. No votes were cast for them because they were unopposed. If they had been opposed then their numbers(presumably large margins of victory for the Democrats) would most likely offset the turnout for Republicans because there was no need for it. So the 57% number is inaccurate, at the very least because it is missing three races worth of (probably largely democratic) votes.
Total votes cast in the 2002 elections in Texas was 4,552,059 Source
Each congressman in Texas represents ~660,000 people. Voter turnout from that election year was ~33%. Lets assume those unopposed Democratic incumbents, had they been opposed, would have won by the same kind of landslides we saw in most of the other races. Say 35% margin of victory. So that means 32.5% R and 67.5% D in those races. 660,000/3(to get 33% turnout) is 220,000. 220.000 * 67.5% = 148500 D votes per race and 220,000 * 32.5% = 71,500 R votes per uncontested race. Now we take the total number of votes cast for Congressmen, of which 57% were for Republicans, and 43% for Democrats and add in our made up numbers for the races that didn’t happen.
4,552,059 * 57% = 2594674 R votes for Congressmen. Plus the 3 * 71,500 they would, theoretically, have won if the uncontested races had been run. New total, statewide, of 2,809,174
4552059 * 43% = 2,139,468 D votes for congressmen statewide. Now we add in the 3 * 148,500 they would have won in the uncontested races. New total, statewide, of 2,584,968
New totals for both parties = 5394142
2809174/5394142 = the Republican’s margin of statewide overage if those races had been run. 52% A 5% diffirential from their actual representation.
Now what if we aren’t so generous and we say the votes in those uncontested elections should belong wholly to the Democrats? Well, then we get 220,000 * 3 to add to the D’s total, and nothing to add to the R’s total. Let’s see where their percentages are now.
R congressional votes cast in the 2002 elections = 2,594,674
D congressional votes cast in the 2002 elections = 2,139,468 Plus the votes that were cast for them by default because no one even ran against them. 660,000 = New D congressional votes statewide of 2,799,468 Brings the new theoretical total to the same as before,
5,394,142. So now where do the D’s stand? 2,799,468 / 5,394,142 = ~ 52% Hmm, that’s odd. Now, the D’s seem to be leading. They won ~52% of the statewide vote, even if some of it was by default, and they got ~57% of the representation. Seems fairly close to me.
Have I made my point about how that one statistic is not a silver bullet? Or should I start picking apart the other races where there was not representatives from both parties? Start analyzying voter turnout for the various districts, especially those without strong competition for the incumbent? You know there were four GOP candidates who ran without Dem opposition and absolutely slaughtered their independent, green, and libertarian opponents. Should votes from those races be considered? After all, in the big picture we’re only talking D&R
Nope, I still reject this kind of high-level analysis of the voting results. Do you understand why?
Enjoy,
Steven
Sources I know tell me the reason why this redistricting is such a battle is because the democrats of the United States senate are filibustering GWB’s Supreme Court nominees. And this is why in Texas they feel it is ok to drop the two-thirds vote tradition in Texas.
If you want to fight GWB remember he can get dirty too.
Sorry, but no. There are so many flaws in your analysis that I’m having trouble deciding where to begin. Your math makes absolutely no sense. You are setting totally random number values. You’ve given no basis for those values. And the logic underlying your math is totally flawed.
Let’s go through a couple of the problems.
First, a logical flaw – we have no reason to assume that the Dems would have won by the “typical landslide margin.” In fact, the Reps left those races unopposed because they were likely to lose by greater margins than in other districts. And even if we could assume that the Dems would have won by a “typical landslide margin,” we also have no reason to believe that 35% is a reasonable figure for a typical landslide victory. Where are you getting the 35% number? Are you pulling it from thin air? Is it some kind of average? If so, what are you averaging?
But the races did happen! When a candidate is “running unopposed,” he/she isn’t just placed in office. The candidate’s name still appears on the ballot, and people are still given the opportunity to vote for them. In fact, it would be reasonable to expect that in an unopposed election, more people would vote for the candidate than normal because they have no other option (other than writing someone in or not voting for anyone), and fewer people would vote for a candidate from the opposing party (because there isn’t one). So what you’re doing here is calculating the “landslide” victories for the Dems twice.
Plus, you’re assuming 43% voted for Dems. My source only says that 57% voted for Reps. Are you assuming that noone in Texas voted for Libertarian, Green Party, or other independent candidates? If you have a source that says 43% voted for Dems, please feel free to post it. Otherwise, you’re starting your analysis by giving the Dems too many votes.
But all (or nearly all) the votes in those races did go to the Dems! You can’t just double their vote count in their largest victories. At least not if you expect to get any numbers with any relationship to reality.
No, what’s odd is the fact that you haven’t done the same (flawed) analysis for the Reps who ran without opposition. Even if you believe your analysis is valid, you surely don’t think it should apply only to the Dems who ran unopposed, and not to the 4 Reps who ran unopposed, do you?
So it’s ok to double the numbers of Dems who ran unopposed by Reps, but we should then subtract the numbers of Reps who ran unopposed by Dems? Why do I feel like I’m in an Escher painting?
No. I don’t understand why the logic of “a larger percentage of people voted for Reps than Reps were elected” is “high-level analysis,” and I certainly don’t understand how this math trick negates that fact.
Your “logic” reeks of the ol’ “Where did the extra dollar go?” trick. If you want to talk seriously about where the extra votes went, I’m listening. But your math and logic are so outrageously flawed that it’s hard to believe you meant this stuff seriously.
Look, facts are facts. 57% voted for Rep congressmen. You can’t change those numbers by adding in fictional races won by the Dems, and subtracting out actual races won by the Reps. If you want to talk about what the actual numbers mean, I’m listening. But it’s a waste of time to argue what-ifs based on made-up figures.
I’m not that eager to get dragged into this debate, but I was curious about some of the facts stated and claims made. So, I did a bit of searching and analysis and found the following.
2002 Congressional results are available from the Texas Secretary of State. Select “2002 General Election.” My analysis of the data shows the following breakdown for the statewide 2002 Congressional vote (apologies for the lack of formatting):
Party Percentage Votes
DEM 43.9 1885178
GRN 0.2 10394
LIB 2.5 107141
IND 0.0 1716
REP 53.3 2290723
W-I 0.0 58
So, the claim that the Republicans got 57% of the vote is off by four percent, but they did get nine percent more than the Democrats.
Information on the court-generated Congressional districts used in the 2002 elections is available from the Texas Legislative Council. In particular, a map [pdf] of and report [pdf] on the current districts is available.
The claim was made that Republicans are more likely to dominate the districts where they are the majority than Democrats are to dominate the districts where they are the majority. The 2001 Congressional Redistricting report’s election history statistics do appear to bear this out. On average, Democrats are ahead by 16% of the vote in their majority districts, while Republicans are ahead by 34%.
While this kind of difference is probably a necessary condition for gerrymandering, I don’t think it’s been proven that it’s a sufficient condition. For example, if Democrats are distributed fairly evenly geographically thoughout Texas, while Republicans are more concentrated in certain areas, I would expect districts with the properties above. (Note: I’m not saying this is the case, just thowing out a hypothetical. Feel free to post evidence for or against.)
From a strictly geometric point of view, however, the districts on the map seem fairly reasonable and compact to me. I haven’t been a Texas resident long enough to judge in general whether the map captures communities of interest, but the Houston districts don’t seem terribly unreasonable.
I don’t have a link to any of the proposed maps, but I recall reading that one of them had a Houston district that extended to the Mexican border(!). Surely, the existing Houston districts are better at capturing communites of interest than that.
Thanks for the research and clarification, Mr. Feely. I certainly trust the Secretary of State’s numbers more than the numbers provided by a newspaper columnist.
Absolutely true. Another potential culprit is voter turnout. If the Democrats in districts that were going to lose to Republicans just didn’t turn out to vote, then that could have a similar effect on the numbers. And neither of those could be improved by redistricting.
I’m still not convinced that the districts aren’t sufficiently fair. In fact, I think the GOP’s focus on one type of race (congressional races) – but not the others that were voted upon by the same voters in the same election (governor, senator, state legislators, etc.) – is probably evidence that there isn’t a problem with all the maps. Instead, I think the numbers probably just got a little fudged in the last election in this one group of races. Of course, I’m open to more evidence either way.
ARRGGG!! Supid stray clicks! Lost most of a post I had been working on. Damnit!
Anyway, back to the issue. The 57% number is suspect for exactly the reasons I mentioned earlier, among others. It was calculated, according to the GOP Texas website(where I first saw it), based off of this document(PDF), which was an unoffical summary of the results. This document did NOT include the three uncontested races in districts 15, 16, and 20. As such it did NOT accurately represent all the votes cast in all the races. To try to clarify the distortions from these omissions I, in a previous post, estimated voting results as if those races had been accounted for. One of my estimates was fairly close(52% as opposed to the 53% they actually won), but it didn’t take into account that the voter turnout in uncontested elections was absolutely terrible. Every election turned out over 100,000 voters(average voter turnout across the districts was 134,225) except those three unopposed races and one of the Dems who ran without GOP opposition(the race enticed less than 57 thousand voters to the polls). In those three races the turnout was in the high 60,000s and low 70,000s. Absolute lowest turnout was District 29 where less than 57k voters turned out to back their incumbent against his minor-party long shot opponent. I guess it is to be expected that turnout in those elections would be low. Interestingly enough, the Republicans who ran without Democratic opposition managed to garner much larger turnouts(Districts 7, 8, 12, and 19, average 129K). I wonder why this was. I guess it coule be because there were more Republicans packed into those districts, or maybe the candidates ran more effective and energizing campaigns. Anyone who lives in those districts, I’d love to hear your impressions of the campaigns and why they had strong turnouts when other races without major party opposition had weak turnouts. Four of four Republicans without major opposition had fairly strong turnouts. Four out of five Democrats without major opposition had pathetic turnouts(although three of those were completely unopposed, so the “race” was a bit of a non starter as far as excitement and turnout goes). This may just be an anomoly though.
I’d be interested in seeing the method used to generate the district dominance numbers. I did a rough analysis of average margin of victory for D’s and R’s a while back and my numbers were much closer than yours. I don’t still have those numbers, but they were something like 32% average margin of victory for D’s and 36% average margin of victory for R’s. I may re-run my numbers if I get some downtime. The format they are in from the Secretary of State’s office makes it much easier than it was back in the days when I had to weed through the PDF file I linked to above. I may have just screwed up and missed a bunch of stuff or not accurately tabulated early/absentee voting. I recall seeing a summary of the election results on the GOP Texas website which gave the differential between the average margins of victory for D’s and R’s as something like 12%. I can’t find that page now, but it was being touted as absolute proof of gerrymandering. It did not factor in the three completely unopposed races either. Still, the average margin of victory between D’s and R’s was much closer than your numbers seem to indicate. I’m wondering what I’m missing. Any info you could give on your methodology would be appreciated.
Anyway, for further research, especially maps, check out the RedViewer. This is the same application the actual congresscritters use. You may have to look up proposed maps by the name of the sponsor. Most news articles don’t reference the proposed maps by the map plan number. Lots of cool features in that app, including demographic data for various regions.
There are undoubtedly some inequities in the current plan(I think there will be some in any plan), but I am not as certain they are responsible for any distortions in the current representation. I still don’t buy the idea that statewide averages should correlate to representation and that if it doesn’t, it is clear evidence of unfair maps and such. I feel that individual races, issues, and candidates are much bigger factors and should be included in any analysis which tries to determine if the Texas voter is indeed correctly being represented.
For a second, and for the sake of arguement, let’s accept this premise. The proposed maps all would, according to estimates, woul give the Republicans an advantage ranging from 18-14 to 22-10. Now, they’re all about making a “fair” map and they’ve touted this 57% number(which we’ve seen is inaccurate, at best). Their new maps are designed to cherry-pick the voters to give them a majority between 56%(18-14) and 69%(22-10). Since we’ve seen that an accurate statewide number shows them with a 53% statewide majority, how can they claim they are only interested in fairness? How can anyone actually interested in fairness support their efforts? Call the D’s a bunch of spineless weenies and I’ll nod right along with you. At the moment though, they’re the only thing standing between the possibly unfair maps we currently have and the definitely unfair maps which have been proposed.
Enjoy,
Steven
The dominance numbers I posted were derived from the statewide weighted-average election results for the voting age population (the VAP rows of the last two columns of pages 20-22 of the linked report). I took an average of majority % - minority % for the districts where the Democrats are a majority and the districts where the Republicans are a majority.
Since these numbers are each a “weighted average of the results of all general election statewide contested contests” in each district, I figured that they give a better basis for measurement of political composition of the districts than the 2002 Congressional results on their own.