Weekly Update

Weekly Update

Florida: Special Session for Redistricting Begins With its congressional map tied up in the courts, legislators in Florida have convened a another special session to redraw state senate lines in an effort to head off court invalidation. It is scheduled to last three weeks and state news organizations report it is likely to be a contentious one. You can view the current districts and 6 proposed map that have been unveiled so far.   Ohio: Redistricting Ballot Measure Not as Sexy as Other Issues Good government groups backing Ohio Ballot Issue 1 are up against widespread ignorance about the proposal.…
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Appeals Court Overturns Lawyer Fees in Texas Redistricting Case

Appeals Court Overturns Lawyer Fees in Texas Redistricting Case

AUSTIN, TX — A federal appeals panel has reversed a decision granting roughly $360,000 in legal fees to lawyers who helped former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis fend off Republican-drawn political boundaries as part of a yearslong court fight over Texas’ redistricting maps. Read more in the San Antonio Express. Read the Opinion here.
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Politics or Voter Discrimination? Texas City Sued for Election Changes

Politics or Voter Discrimination? Texas City Sued for Election Changes

Pasadena, Texas: MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund)  filed suit this past November after the Mayor of Pasadena, Texas successfully pushed a proposition to voters that would change an 8 member city council elected by district to one with 6 single member districts and 2 members elected at-large, by the entire city. Advocates of the narrowly passed measure touted it as a way to ensure that there are some council members looking out for the city as a whole, as opposed to narrowly focusing on the voters in their own district. What sounds like a good democratic goal…
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Do Ineligible Voters Infringe on Eligible Voter’s Rights?

Do Ineligible Voters Infringe on Eligible Voter’s Rights?

The Supreme Court will decide soon whether to take the case of a Texas voter who claims that her vote has been unconstitutionally diluted because her rural district has substantially more voters compared to other, urban districts comprised of many noncitizen, ineligible voters. The claim is that this makes her vote less influential than her counterparts in urban districts. The practical question in this case is whether line-drawers should be using 'total population' or "citizen voting age population' as the measure for drawing equally populated election districts. This Cato Institute article explains the case; Evenwel v. Abbott  in more detail.
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Quarterly Redistricting Update: October 2014

Quarterly Redistricting Update: October 2014

Florida Fair Districts Case In early July, a circuit court judge in Tallahassee ruled Florida’s congressional map did indeed violate the state’s Fair Districts amendments outlawing partisan influenced linedrawing. The 5th and 10th congressional districts were singled out by the court as requiring modification. The judge added that Florida’s Republican legislature made a “mockery” of the Fair Districts Amendments and used political consultants on the sly to draw the map. In early August, the legislature approved a new map, which made changes to 7 districts in total - but Common Cause, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, says the map does…
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Case Filing: Missouri NAACP v. Ferguson-Florissant School District et. al.

Case Filing: Missouri NAACP v. Ferguson-Florissant School District et. al.

Missouri - Plaintiffs content in this lawsuit filed in December that African-American voters in Ferguson-Florissant are denied the ability to elect candidates of their choice to the local school board because of the existing at-large voting system. "Despite the fact that African Americans are almost half of the School District’s population and are a substantial majority of its students, there has never been adequate representation of African Americans on the Board. At present, the Board has only one African-American member."   They claim that under section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, that the at-large method of voting dilutes minority voting power…
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Case Filing: Harding v. County of Dallas, Texas

Case Filing: Harding v. County of Dallas, Texas

In January, Anglo voters in Dallas County represented by the Equal Voting Rights Institute filed a minority vote dilution claim against the majority minority County Commissioners Court's 2010 redistricting map, which it describes as "dilut[ing] the overall influence of the Anglo minority in Dallas so that, even if cross-over voting allowed an Anglo preferred candidate to win the County Judgeship, Anglos could not obtain control of the Commissioners Court. It did so, even though it meant dividing political subdivisions, and exaggerating the population disparities between CCDs (whether measured by total population or by CVAP) far beyond the ideal distribution." Read…
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Case Filing: Patino v. City of Pasadena

Case Filing: Patino v. City of Pasadena

Voters represented by the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund filed suit this past November claiming minority vote dilution against the City of Pasadena, Texas. At issue is a change in the voting procedures for the eight member city council. Voters in the city recently passed a proposition to change from eight single member districts to a hybrid system of six single member districts and two at-large seats. Plaintiffs claim that this "will reduce Hispanic voting strength and will impede Hispanic voters’ ability to elect candidates of choice in subsequent in Pasadena City Council elections."   Read the Complaint here.
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