Texas is one of the few states in the union that is scheduled to get more seats in the U.S. House as a result of population growth in the 2010 census, and that's created an intense redistricting battle there. Most of the population growth is due to Latino immigration.
But don't expect that diversity to make it into the redistricting maps. State Rep. Burt Solomons released his map this week, and MALDEF, a group that's urging the Latino community to get involved in the process to ensure its fairness, says the proposal actually reduces the number of Latino majority districts, rather than increase them as it should. Here's what the group had to say in a press release:
The Solomons proposal's elimination of Latino-majority District thirty three in Nueces County reduces Latino electoral opportunity and raises the issue of illegal retrogression under the federal Voting Rights Act. Also potentially illegal under the Voting Rights Act, the Solomons House proposal fails to create a new Latino-majority district in the Lower Rio Grande Valley and “fractures” and “packs” Latino voters in El Paso, Tarrant and Harris counties to create fewer Latino voter registration majority districts than would result from a more even distribution of voters.
That's the Republican approach to diversity in many instances: draw it away. And that also means that Texas is shaping up to be a redistricting battle. But then, much of the rest of the country is, too.
