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Sunday, September 25, 2011

Hastening the Day Texas Turns Blue for Good

Associated Press
SAN ANTONIO -- The Congressional redistricting plan that passed the Texas legislature this spring is illegal, according to a U.S. Department of Justice ruling Monday. Attorneys for the state on Friday had defended the new election districts drawn by the Republican-led Legislature, saying they were designed within the law… Several minority and Democratic groups filed a lawsuit over the redistricting maps approved during the summer, alleging new voting district lines are illegally discriminatory because they camouflage a statewide surge in Hispanic growth during the past decade… Texas received four new seats in the U.S. House based on the most recent census population count. That was more than any other state and came in the wake of a population boom overwhelmingly driven by Hispanics. The Legislature was tasked with updating the district lines. Plaintiffs argued the surge in Hispanic growth warranted those residents getting more representation in new districts, yet the Republican plan splits Hispanic and black communities so conservative white residents would be more likely to win seats in Congress… Critics contend Hispanic-dominated precincts with a history of low turnout were moved… to meet the constitutional requirements while maintaining its GOP dominance. Hispanic voters have traditionally supported Democratic candidates.
The clumsy and conspicuous efforts by the Texas GOP efforts to exploit population gains by Democratic-leaning minorities to consolidate the Republicans' ever more precarious hold on Texas have been called out by the Justice Department and in a way that highlights their racism as much as their desperation. It is to be hoped that this will hasten the inevitable day when Texas turns Blue exposing for all and for good the reality of the modern GOP as an out of touch reactionary patriarchal theocratic white-racist neo-feudal neo-Confederate rump utterly marginal to the life of our ever more wholesomely diversifying, secularizing, socializing, planetizing Nation.

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