WP: Still Seeking a Fair Vote (MLK, Delay's TX redistricting, Sup Crt)

[Pirate Smile]

Still Seeking a Fair Vote

By Nick Kotz

Monday, January 16, 2006; Page A17

Forty-one years ago, on Jan. 15, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson placed a phone call to congratulate the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on his 36th birthday -- but mainly to strategize about how they could win a monumental victory for equal rights. King was in Selma, Ala., where he had just launched a dramatic campaign to show how African Americans in the Deep South were being denied the right to vote. He had chosen Selma because of that city's notorious success in blocking its black residents from the polls. Those who dared to attempt to register risked their lives. They endured bloody beatings, lost their jobs, saw their homes and churches bombed. Some were brutally murdered.

-snip-
Masterminding the controversial redistricting plan approved in 2003, then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay shuffled thousands of African American and Hispanic voters between Texas congressional districts like pawns on a chessboard. With mathematical efficiency, DeLay redrew voting district boundaries to ensure that Republicans would gain five additional House seats. His goal: to further cement his own power and Republican control of the House of Representatives.
In Dallas and Austin, Republicans won new congressional seats after the DeLay map broke up large concentrations of urban black and Hispanic Democratic voters, then scattered them thinly throughout other Republican-dominated districts -- many extending into rural areas far from the voters' homes. These maneuvers violated standard redistricting principles, such as trying to maintain geographically compact districts and respecting county and city boundaries.



-snip-
Gerrymandering for partisan advantage is almost as old as the nation itself. But the Voting Rights Act, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, forbids state and local governments from creating districts that clearly reduce the ability of minority voters to elect "candidates of their choice." Civil rights organizations that have appealed the Texas redistricting contend that it violates the 1965 law, stripping away the ability of tens of thousands of minority voters to elect candidates of their choice.

-snip-
The Supreme Court has the opportunity to reaffirm and clarify the central purposes of the Voting Rights Act. And Congress can and should honor King's memory by renewing important parts of the voting rights law that otherwise will expire next year, thus advancing his ideal of a more representative democracy.

Nick Kotz is the author of "Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws That Changed America." He will answer questions at 2 p.m. tomorrow onhttp://www.washingtonpost.com.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/15/AR2006011500928.html

edit to add this December Wash Post article:

Justice Staff Saw Texas Districting As Illegal
Voting Rights Finding On Map Pushed by DeLay Was Overruled

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 2, 2005; Page A01

Justice Department lawyers concluded that the landmark Texas congressional redistricting plan spearheaded by Rep. Tom DeLay (R) violated the Voting Rights Act, according to a previously undisclosed memo obtained by The Washington Post. But senior officials overruled them and approved the plan.

The memo, unanimously endorsed by six lawyers and two analysts in the department's voting section, said the redistricting plan illegally diluted black and Hispanic voting power in two congressional districts. It also said the plan eliminated several other districts in which minorities had a substantial, though not necessarily decisive, influence in elections.

"The State of Texas has not met its burden in showing that the proposed congressional redistricting plan does not have a discriminatory effect," the memo concluded.

The memo also found that Republican lawmakers and state officials who helped craft the proposal were aware it posed a high risk of being ruled discriminatory compared with other options.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/01/AR2005120101927.html

[coldiggs]

1. The thing though is Texas is a republican state so you would think that mo

st of their reps. will be republicans.

[Pirate Smile]

2. If you draw the lines to specifically dilute the votes of minorities, it

violates the Voting Rights Act which is what all the staff attorneys at the Justice Department determined. They said Delay's redistricting violated the VRA. The political hacks Bush put in at the Justice Department overruled them.

I'll find the article.

The Supreme Court should throw it out. It should have never been approved.

We will see if the new Justices Bush appointed are also political hacks or if they actually will actually follow the Voting Rights Act.

edit to add - here is the article - I'm going to add it to the original post also.

Justice Staff Saw Texas Districting As Illegal
Voting Rights Finding On Map Pushed by DeLay Was Overruled

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 2, 2005; Page A01

Justice Department lawyers concluded that the landmark Texas congressional redistricting plan spearheaded by Rep. Tom DeLay (R) violated the Voting Rights Act, according to a previously undisclosed memo obtained by The Washington Post. But senior officials overruled them and approved the plan.

The memo, unanimously endorsed by six lawyers and two analysts in the department's voting section, said the redistricting plan illegally diluted black and Hispanic voting power in two congressional districts. It also said the plan eliminated several other districts in which minorities had a substantial, though not necessarily decisive, influence in elections.

"The State of Texas has not met its burden in showing that the proposed congressional redistricting plan does not have a discriminatory effect," the memo concluded.

The memo also found that Republican lawmakers and state officials who helped craft the proposal were aware it posed a high risk of being ruled discriminatory compared with other options.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/01/AR2005120101927.html

[Jeffersons Ghost]

4. redistricting like that is called

JERRYMANDERING and it caused a hugh scandal in New England when they named it that!

[Pirate Smile]

3. kick