GETTING TRADITIONAL AT THE TIMES

Across U.S., Redistricting as a Never-Ending Battle (DAVID M. HALBFINGER, July 1, 2003, NY Times)

For most of the past century, redistricting has been a fairly predictable though often contentious ritual. Every 10 years, state legislators would use the new census data to redraw Congressional district lines, and the party in power would usually manage to draw maps that gave it an advantage.

Now, thanks to a determined effort by United States Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, with the quiet support of the White House, that tradition may be crumbling, as legislatures draw new districts whenever they have a partisan advantage. [...]

Some Texas Republicans--including Governor Perry and Tom Craddick, who became speaker of the state House in January when the party took control for the first time in 130 years--argue that the state's Congressional delegation, with 17 Democrats and 15 Republicans, does not reflect Texas voting patterns, in which nearly 60 percent of the votes cast for Congress last year were for Republicans.

They say the current Congressional map is just an old Democratic gerrymander. And they say that although the Constitution requires the legislature to draw district boundaries, the current map was drawn by a panel of federal judges.

Others note that Republicans chose at the time to let the judges redraw the Congressional districts rather than compromise with Democrats who still held the majority in the state House.

John R. Alford, a professor at Rice University who was an expert witness for Governor Perry in the 2001 redistricting litigation, said the Republican Party knew at the time that the state Legislature, with its own new district map, was about to swing to Republican control in 2002.

"Republicans used the court-drawn plan as a place to park redistricting until they could address the issue when they were in control of the House and obviously better off in the Senate," Professor Alford said. "You give it to the courts knowing that, after 2002, you'll take it back."

Note that the premise of the story is that Republicans have radically departed from the tradition of letting legislative majorities draw up the districts, but that the facts of the story are that Texas has a Court-drawn plan in effect because Democrats no longer enjoy the lop-sided majority they had in the state until recently, which allowed them to ram any plan down Republican throats. Who exactly is violating the tradition?

The other bit of hilarity here is this sentence: "Some Texas Republicans...argue that the state's Congressional delegation, with 17 Democrats and 15 Republicans, does not reflect Texas voting patterns, in which nearly 60 percent of the votes cast for Congress last year were for Republicans." Is there someone who says that this 17-15 split does reflect a 40%-60% voting pattern? Posted by Orrin Judd at July 1, 2003 12:10 PM