“Most Extreme Example Of Racial Gerrymandering”: Federal Court Blocks Discriminatory Texas Redistricting Plan
In December of last year, the Justice Department asserted that Texas’s redistricting plans for Congress and the state legislature violated Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act by “diminishing the ability of citizens of the United States, on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group, to elect their preferred candidates of choice.” Today a three-judge federal court in Washington concurred with DOJ, writing that Texas’s redistricting plans were “enacted with discriminatory purpose” and did not deserve preclearance under Section 5.
Here are the relevant facts of the case: Texas gained 4.3 million new residents from 2000-2010. Nearly 90 percent of that growth came from minority citizens (65 percent Hispanic, 13 percent African-American, 10 percent Asian). As a result, Texas gained four new Congressional seats, from thirty-two to thirty-six. Yet, under the Congressional redistricting map passed by Texas Republicans following the 2010 election, white Republicans were awarded three of the four new seats that resulted from Democratic-leaning minority population growth. The League of Women Voters called the plan “the most extreme example of racial gerrymandering among all the redistricting proposals passed by lawmakers so far this year.”
Noted the federal court:
The Black and Hispanic communities currently make up 39.3% of Texas’s CVAP [current voting age population]. Thus, if districts were allocated proportionally, there would be 13 minority districts out of the 32 in the benchmark (39.3% of 32 is 12.6). Yet minorities have only 10 seats in the benchmark, so the representation gap is three districts. In the enacted plan, proportional representation would yield 14 ability districts (39.3% of 36 is 14.1), but there are still only 10 ability districts.
Texas Republicans went to extreme lengths in order to dilute and suppress the state’s booming minority vote, as I reported in The Nation in January (see “How the GOP is Resegregating the South”).
According to a lawsuit filed by a host of civil rights groups, “even though Whites’ share of the population declined from 52 percent to 45 percent, they remain the majority in 70 percent of Congressional Districts.” To cite just one of many examples: in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, the Hispanic population increased by 440,898, the African-American population grew by 152,825 and the white population fell by 156,742. Yet white Republicans, a minority in the metropolis, control four of five Congressional seats. Despite declining in population, white Republicans managed to pick up two Congressional seats in the Dallas and Houston areas. In fact, whites are the minority in the state’s five largest counties but control twelve of nineteen Congressional districts.
Texas Republicans not only failed to grant new power to minority voters in the state, they also took away vital economic resources from minority Democratic members of Congress.
Reported the court:
Congressman Al Green, who represents CD 9, testified that “substantial surgery” was done to his district that could not have happened by accident. The Medical Center, Astrodome, rail line, and Houston Baptist University — the “economic engines” of the district — were all removed in the enacted plan. The enacted plan also removed from CD 9 the area where Representative Green had established his district office. Likewise, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, who represents CD 18, testified that the plan removed from her district key economic generators as well as her district office. Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson of CD 30 also testified that the plan removed the American Center (home of the Dallas Mavericks), the arts district, her district office, and her home from CD 30. The mapdrawers also removed the district office, the Alamo, and the Convention Center (named after the incumbent’s father), from CD 20, a Hispanic ability district.
No such surgery was performed on the districts of Anglo incumbents. In fact, every Anglo member of Congress retained his or her district office. Anglo district boundaries were redrawn to include particular country clubs and, in one case, the school belonging to the incumbent’s grandchildren. And Texas never challenged evidence that only minority districts lost their economic centers by showing, for example, that the same types of changes had been made in Anglo districts.
The only explanation Texas offers for this pattern is “coincidence.” But if this was coincidence, it was a striking one indeed. It is difficult to believe that pure chance would lead to such results. The State also argues that it “attempted to accommodate unsolicited requests from a bipartisan group of lawmakers,” and that “[w]ithout hearing from the members, the mapdrawers did not know where district offices were located.” But we find this hard to believe as well. We are confident that the mapdrawers can not only draw maps but read them, and the locations of these district offices were not secret. The improbability of these events alone could well qualify as a “clear pattern, unexplainable on grounds other than race,” and lead us to infer a discriminatory purpose behind the Congressional Plan.
The same analysis applied to the state senate and state house maps as well. “Texas has failed to carry its burden that [its redistricting plans] do not have the purpose or effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group under section 5 of the Voting Rights Act,” the court wrote in its conclusion. An interim map drawn by a federal court in San Antonio in February will be used for the 2012 election.
Texas’s redistricting maps and voter ID law (which DOJ has also objected to and will soon be decided by a federal court in Washington) in many ways embody the conservative response to the country’s changing demographics. Instead of courting an increasingly diverse electorate, Republicans in Texas and elsewhere are trying to take away political power from minority voters and make it harder for them to vote.
Texas is one of seven GOP states that recently filed an amicus brief supporting a challenge to the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act before the Supreme Court. The state has already vowed to appeal the redistricting case to the Supreme Court, which could also hear Texas’s voter ID case if overturned. Texas, it should be noted, has lost more Section 5 enforcement suits than any other state. Today’s ruling is another black eye for Republicans in the Lone Star State.
By: Ari Berman, The Nation, August 28, 2012
“What Are You Going To Do About It?”: Mitt Romney And His Despicable Race Baiting Lies
Regular readers of Political Animal should find this analysis of Mitt Romney’s stretch-run strategy and message, as articulated by Thomas Edsall in the New York Times, very familiar:
The Republican ticket is flooding the airwaves with commercials that develop two themes designed to turn the presidential contest into a racially freighted resource competition pitting middle class white voters against the minority poor.
Ads that accuse President Obama of gutting the work requirements enacted in the 1996 welfare reform legislation present the first theme. Ads alleging that Obama has taken $716 billion from Medicare — a program serving an overwhelmingly white constituency — in order to provide health coverage to the heavily black and Hispanic poor deliver the second. The ads are meant to work together, to mutually reinforce each other’s claims.
Edsall, as you may recall, has been suggesting for a good while that this is the sort of politics the Tea Party Movement is all about.
So that’s the most important sense in which the Romney campaign has finally surrendered unconditionally to the Right: not simply accepting its political positions or promising to make its priorities his own, or placing on his ticket their favorite politician–but also adopting its meta-message about the kind of people Obama represents (those people) and the kind of people who are suffering from his redistributionist ways.
It’s clear by now that the Romney campaign is going to shrug off the almost universal denunciation of his welfare ads (and to only a lesser extent, his Medicare ads that show a white senior frowning as the narrator says ObamaCare is “not for you”) as a pack of despicable, race-baiting lies–or use the so’s-your-old-man argument that Obama’s campaign tactics justify his own. If nothing else, his wizards probably figured out some time ago that the “welfare” crap offered a rare opportunity to hit notes equally effective with “the base” and the non-college educated white voters who make up a high percentage of this election’s “swing.” Add in the thick armor conservatives have built for themselves against any accusations of racism–now, almost by definition, they believe only liberals are racists, and only white people are targets of racism–and it was probably an easy call for Team Mitt, particularly since truthfulness is not a factor at all.
The Romney campaign’s attitude seems to be that of the famous nineteenth century rogue William (Boss) Tweed, who when confronted by journalists with his misdeeds, said: “Well, what are you going to do about it?” Romney’s not going to be shamed out of his unsavory tactics. But on the other hand, if his gambit fails, not only will his presidential ambitions perish once and for all, but just maybe the kind of politics he has come to exemplify–rich people encouraging the middle class to “kick down” at “those people”–will take a hit as well.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, August 27, 2012
False “Progress” At Augusta National”: Three-Quarters Of The Way Through The 20th Century
The London Olympics, as I wrote two weeks ago, turned out to be a great showcase of female athletic talent and the progress American women — and women in general — have made in sports, particularly in the 40 years since Title IX became law and guaranteed them equal access. Today’s announcement that Augusta National Golf Club — the Georgia country club that plays host to men’s professional golf’s biggest tournament — is admitting its first female memberswould seem, then, another sign of progress for female athletes just a week after the Olympics ended.
Not hardly.
Chairman Billy Payne certainly deserves a little credit for taking a step the men before him would not and admitting the club’s first two female members — former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and business executive Darla Moore — both of whom immediately accepted. A little praise, however, is all Augusta deserves for progressing roughly (no pun intended) three quarters of the way through the 20th century.
Augusta, full of green-clad white men who for years denied women and blacks the opportunity to join and play its fabled course, has long epitomized the worst stereotypes of golf, a sport that has made genuine efforts to increase opportunities for women and minorites in recent years, as a game for the white, male one-percent. It didn’t admit its first black member until 1990, 15 years after Lee Elder became the first African-American to play in the Masters. Now, it is admitting its first female members a full 63 years after the foundation of the Ladies Professional Golf Association.
The club didn’t relent on its membership policy when it faced widespread criticism and a mass protest led by Dr. Martha Burk in 2003; instead, it dug in deeper. And it didn’t relent earlier this year when it didn’t extend membership to Virginia Rometty, the chief executive of IBM, one of the Masters three chief sponsors (the CEOs of the other two sponsors, as well as Rometty’s predecessor at IBM, are members). In 2011, it banned a female journalist from the locker room, drawing protests from news organizations and other reporters.
Augusta, make no mistake, is still the bastion of inequality and elitism it has always been. It’s just a little less so now. As far as credit for the “progress” Augusta National has supposedly made, I’ll reserve that for the day the club hosts a women’s tournament and finally joins the rest of us in the 21st century.
By: Travis Waldron, Think Progress, August 20, 2012
“Unconnected To A Concern With The Truth”: Mitt Romney’s Implausible Bid For The High Road
Politics is tough, and most politicians—including President Obama—are willing to bend the truth to win an election. But there’s a difference between the small distortions of all campaigns, and the brazen dishonesty we’re seeing from Romney. In a 48-hour period, Mitt Romney has doubled-down on the false charge that Obama has ended work requirements for welfare, lied about the Affordable Care Act’s Medicare cost savings, and kicked up a storm over comments made by Vice President Joe Biden. That last one is noteworthy for the sheer chutzpah of Romney’s complaint.
During an event in Danville, Virginia (pronounced Dan-vul) with African-American supporters of the president, Biden deployed somewhat unfortunate language in attacking Romney’s promised repeal of financial reform:
“Romney wants to let the — he said the first 100 days — he’s gonna let the big banks once again write their own rules. Unchain Wall Street,” Biden said at an event in Danville, Va. “They gonna put y’all back in chains.”
“Unchain” was a reference to Paul Ryan’s promise to “unshackle” the economy by repealing financial regulations and health care reform. And while Biden’s message is clear, it’s probably wise to avoid an allusion to slavery when talking to an audience of black people. Even still, it’s not a huge deal.
Wrong.
Team Romney wasted no time in jumping on the vice president’s rhetoric. “Well, there’s going to be folks across the country that will try and take that as some kind of code word that is going to suggest that the Republicans are trying to be racial in their programs,” said former New Hampshire governor John Sununu. Yesterday evening, while campaigning in Ohio, Romney referenced Biden’s remarks, attacking the Obama campaign for its “divisive” campaign:
“This is what an angry and desperate presidency looks like. President Obama knows better, promised better, and America deserves better,” Romney told a roaring crowd of about 5,000 supporters in Chillicothe. “His campaign strategy is to smash America apart and then try to cobble together 51 percent of the pieces. If an American president wins that way, we all lose.”
Romney added, “Mr. President, take your campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago and let us get about rebuilding and reuniting America.”
It’s hard to take this seriously. As I said earlier, Romney began this week with two huge whoppers. In an ad called “Long History,” Romney repeats the charge that Obama has ended welfare’s work requirements, “On July 12th, Obama quietly ended work requirements for welfare. You wouldn’t have to work, and wouldn’t have to train for a job.” Romney used this line last week, and was promptly denounced for his mendacity, and not just from the usual collection of fact-checkers; both Ron Haskins (who built welfare reform) and Bill Clinton (who signed it) weighed in to dispute Romney’s claim, which Clinton called “not true.”
The most disgraceful thing about Romney’s welfare attack—which he continues to use—is that it’s an obvious ploy to associate Obama with “handouts.” Welfare is one of the most racialized issues in American politics, and Romney’s attacks are a clear callback to the “welfare queens” and “young bucks” that punctuated Ronald Reagan’s rhetoric. It’s only a little more subtle than Newt Gingrich’s declaration that Obama is a “food stamp” president, and serves a similar purpose: to erode Obama’s standing among white voters who reflexively oppose anything that might hand benefits to the “undeserving.”
The same idea (and goal) underlies Romney’s attacks on the Medicare savings in the Affordable Care Act—“The money you paid for guaranteed health care is now going to a massive government program, that’s not for you.” With the backdrop of a white senior, the message of this ad is plain to see: Obama is giving your tax dollars to minorities.
(Since this is bound to inspire protest from readers, I will point you in the direction of research detailing the tight connection between racial attitudes and support for government programs.)
This is why it’s hard to stomach Romney’s complaints about “anger” and “divisiveness”; they come less than two days after he has renewed his attempt to split white voters from Obama with tired tropes about the undeserving poor. And when you look at the whole of his general-election campaign—which includes regular attacks on Obama’s fictional “apology tour,” and routine lies about his job-creation record—there’s no way in which Romney is in a position to take the high road.
Philosopher Harry Frankfurt famously defined “bullshit” as a statement made without regard to its truth value. Whether it’s true or false is irrelevant—the point is to persuade. “[B]ullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true.”
If this doesn’t describe Mitt Romney, I’m not sure what does.
By: Jamelle Bouie, The American Prospect, August 15, 2012
“Voter Rights Lose in Pennsylvania”: To Protect Your Right To Vote, You Must Lose Your Right To Vote
Let’s imagine a world in which Pennsylvania’s voter-ID law did not disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters. The law, which requires voters show government-issued identification in order to vote, has created significant burdens for voters without IDs, a population disproportionately made up of poor people and minorities. In our imaginary world, the state would do a stellar job of educating voters, reaching out to African Americans—who disproportionately lack state IDs—and Spanish-language media. They would send postcards as early as possible to tell every voter in the state about the change. A “card of last resort” would be available to any voter who could not easily access the required documents for a standard ID, which include a birth certificate and a Social Security card. Employees at the state’s driver’s license centers would be well-versed in the law and give voters advice about what was needed and what they were entitled to receive for free. Election workers would be well-trained and poll places would have provisional ballots for those who did not have ID on election day. If every single component of that implementation went perfectly, then maybe the law would not have the disastrous impact that almost all voting-rights activists predict it will have.
According to Pennsylvania Commonwealth Judge Robert Simpson, the mere possibility of that counterfactual scenario is enough. This morning, the judge denied a request from four voting-rights groups to block the law. The lawsuit will now head to the state supreme court—”as quickly as possible,” says Penda Hair, executive director for the Advancement Project, one of the parties to the suit.
Over the phone, Hair was deflated. “It’s a very sad day for democracy,” she said.
Simpson’s decision centered on a few key legal questions: Whether the law was unconstitutional “on its face”—as opposed to in practice—and what standard should be applied to judge its constitutionality. In evaluating laws, judges apply different standards. “Strict scrutiny” is an elevated standard, which is most typically applied when the law in question targets minorities or involves a fundamental right; to be ruled constitutional, the law must be narrowly tailored, serve a “compelling state interest,” and be the only way the state can achieve the intended effect. In other words, the state has the burden of showing that we really, really need this law. The “rational basis” is much more lenient—all the state has to show is that the law serves some legitimate purpose (i.e., that it’s not totally frivolous). In his lengthy opinion, the judge determined that, based on prior cases, including the U.S. Supreme Court case over Indiana’s voter-ID law, a strict scrutiny test was not “the appropriate measure” for the case. Because of this, the law’s proponents did not need to show that the Pennsylvania law served a “compelling state interest.” In other words, even though the law was ostensibly passed to prevent voter fraud, the fact there is no voter-fraud problem in the state doesn’t matter. Simpson also wrote that the plaintiffs’ case hinged on the many things that would or could go wrong, but that the law was not unconstitutional as written—the plaintiffs would have to wait until after the election to see if it had been harmful.
In a conference call with Hair and the other plaintiffs’ lawyers, the legal team was eager to point out that should the state Supreme Court subject the law to stricter scrutiny, they would stand a much better chance of winning. The lawyers pointed to cases in Missouri and Wisconsin, where courts found that similar voter-ID laws violated their state constitutions, based on a strict-scrutiny test. Simpson had relied more heavily on precedent from a U.S. Supreme Court case that ruled on violations to the federal Constitution—a different argument than the one the plaintiffs were making.
Hair had harsh words for the judge’s decision. The ruling implied “voters have to wait until after the election, after they’re barred from voting, and then you can show that the harm is actually applied to them,” she said. “To protect your right to vote you have to lose your right to vote in one important election. That’s the only way I can read this.”
In the conference call, attorney David Gersch was even more blunt. “The court was wrong about that,” he said, pointing to the judge’s acknowledgement that certainly more than 1 percent of voters would be impacted. In Pennsylvania that means at least 89,000 people may lose a fundamental right.
The state has talked a lot about its plans for voter outreach and making it easier to obtain an ID. But so far, the only thing the state has done is to allow those born in Pennsylvania to retrieve a “certified birth record” by providing their personal information at a driver’s license center. It’s easier than obtaining a birth certificate for sure, but it still requires two trips—one to request the record and another to get an ID. There are other measures in the works: For those lacking documents, an ID “of last resort” is supposed to become available by the end of August, and by the end of September, postcards will go out to every voting household in the state informing people of the new law. Pennsylvania has also hired a PR company to do media outreach.
But many doubt these efforts will be sufficient. The PR company the state hired is controlled by Republicans, which some say will be disinclined to alert poor and nonwhite voters—voters who lean Democratic—about the law. It is also unclear how many people—and where—the law will affect. The state’s data showed more than 750,000 without a state ID, but that data has significant flaws. In testimony, a state official explained that he expected fewer than 10,000 IDs to be issued for voting purposes.
Voting-rights advocates are suspicious of the state’s efforts. The Pennsylvania Voter ID Coalition, made up of 140 civic, religious and voting-rights groups, has opted not to educate any voters on the “card of last resort” until it’s actually available, since the state doesn’t always make its deadlines. Meanwhile, several studies have shown that employees at the driver’s license centers are not sufficiently familiar with the law and have misinformed voters about the rules.
Judge Simpson, however, put great faith in the state’s voter-outreach efforts. He was dismissive of the plaintiff’s expert witness, a political scientist who showed through survey research that a third of voters were unaware of the law and as much as 12.6 percent of the state’s registered voters may lack the necessary ID. “I am not convinced any qualified elector need be disenfranchised by Act 18,” Simpson wrote, pointing to absentee voting and provisional ballot options for those struggling meet the requirements.
Oddly, however, the judge did acknowledge that the law would hurt voter access. He gave the plaintiffs credit for establishing that the law would prevent some legitimate voters from casting ballots and that some would unfairly be charged for their IDs. He even addressed statements from Mike Turzai, the Republican House Majority Leader who said in an audience that voter ID would ensure a Romney victory, calling the statements “disturbing, tendentious” and “boastful.” But he chose to believe Turzai was alone in his cynical and partisan views, and decided granting the injunction would do more to hurt than help the problems.
To Hair, Simpson’s opinion amounts to a punt to the state Supreme Court. “I interpret it as the lower court saying, ‘If I make a ruling one way or another and then the Supreme Court changes that ruling on appeal, which is going to be worse?” she said. (As I’ve written, this is a concern many activists have had about the ruling.) Hair is already focusing on the Supreme Court, where she believes the plaintiffs can prove that with so many impacted, the law creates an undue burden.
“There won’t be a question that close to a million people will be affected by this law,” she says. “You don’t need to show absolutely without any doubt that you will be barred from voting. We showed massive burdens that these voters have to overcome.”
“We believe that just like the poll tax wasn’t an absolute barrier—you could pay the tax and vote—overcoming these burdens should not be a requirement.”
By: Abby Rapoport, The American Prospect, August 15, 2012
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