Electoral Map Chaos
As of this writing, Texas is the only state in the union whose citizens have no earthly idea when, or if, they will hold a primary election for the two major parties this year. The primaries depend on a reapportionment map of the state, which doesn’t exist.
The U.S. Constitution clearly states that “Representatives . . . shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers” and reapportioned every ten years. The ten-year reapportionment is for adjustments caused by a decade’s national census. Under the last census, Texas gained four representatives because of a growth in her population. The state legislature has the right and obligation to reapportion the districts to reflect the change in Texas, with a map outlining the districts. Nowhere in the Constitution, or the amendments thereto, is there a mention of a federal court having to approve such a legislative map before it goes into effect. In fact, the Tenth Amendment makes it clear that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution are reserved to the states. So what’s the problem?
The legislature of Texas has made its reapportionment map. Indeed, it has made several, in succession. Unfortunately, none can take effect because of the (unconstitutional) Voting Rights Act of 1965, which has been renewed four times, the last by President George W. Bush, for 25 more years. The act purports to require the approval of a federal court before a Southern state’s reapportionment is legal, and usually, Texas has meekly complied. For several years past, various racial and ethnic organizations, whether or not they actually represented anyone, have challenged the legislative maps and won before the federal court, causing the maps to be redrawn to accommodate such groups. This year there are a record number of complainers, a Republican legislature with some backbone, and a vacillating federal court. The panel of judges has ruled recently that all of the complainers, plus the legislature, must be in full “voluntary” agreement on all district lines. Meeting after meeting, and map after map, have produced nothing, since there is always at least one complaining group holding out. Today, it is LULAC, the League of United Latin American Citizens, which claims that two new Hispanic-majority districts out of four is not enough, though the increase in citizens is mostly Anglo. Public pressure has not moved this group, and there is always a chance that, even if it gets its way, one of the other groups might then decide that it doesn’t like the resulting map.
The upshot is that the primary originally scheduled for March might not be held until April, May, or even after the national conventions. The court is also playing with the idea of Texas holding two primaries, one for the parties’ presidential/senatorial nominations, and another one for the parties’ nominations to the House of Representatives and state legislative offices. This would cost the state millions, as well as possibly cause the failure of the latter primary to be held in time for campaigning.
Meanwhile, no would-be candidate for the House knows which district he is in. So he doesn’t know which to announce his candidacy for, or whether to do so at all, since he doesn’t know who his constituency would be.
Today’s mess ensued because the Voting Rights Act has become a sacred cow, since it was mislabeled a civil-rights law.
The Voting Rights Act was first passed during a highly emotional time, a situation the Constitution as a whole was designed to discourage in the making of our laws. It applies only to the Southern states, even thought the Northern states are now most guilty of gerrymandering by race, ethnicity, and for other demographic considerations, as well as to protect incumbencies. The last federal court to approve a Texas map by the exhausted legislature created a district stretching from a part of San Antonio, in the south-central part of the state, to a part of El Paso, in the far western tip, a distance of almost 550 miles, and only a few city blocks or a quarter-mile wide in most areas. There was no “community of interest” in that district whatsoever. The newest map, now requiring the full agreement of so many disparate groups, will probably be worse, if it is approved by the federal court at all.
Perhaps the greatest irony is that the Voting Rights Act of 1965—this throwback to the unlamented Reconstruction period—is now the only U.S. law in 150 years to recognize the Confederate States of America, if only for the purpose of punishing those states of which it had consisted.
—Egon Richard Tausch
[Ed.: On March 1, 2012, one day after this article went to press, a three-judge panel in San Antonio approved an "interim map" and declared May 31 to be the date for the 2012 Texas primaries. See this article for more information.]
[This article first appeared in the April 2012 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. To subscribe, click here.]
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Mr. Tausch,
Your words:
"Perhaps the greatest irony is that the Voting Rights Act of 1965—this throwback to the unlamented Reconstruction period—is now the only U.S. law in 150 years to recognize the Confederate States of America, if only for the purpose of punishing those states of which it had consisted."
As a Southerner, I appreciate your article. Punishing or attempting to punish the Southern states, most although not all of which were members of the union of constitutionally federated republics known as the Confederate States of America, began long before the WAR. This fault line is deeply embedded in the history of America. It is, however, true that after being looted and disenfranchised, the South with all of the problems associated with that looting and disenfranchising, remained in the languid backwater of American history; and nobody really "cared" about Southern goings-on. Post WWII, however, as we began to emerge from the backwater, the folks who lusted and quested for power and who needed votes, began to take notice of us. There is a lot to the story, but the summary is that the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act were instruments for that quest, along with the 1965 Immigration Reform Act which had as its target America beyond even the South.
I recall that as the Justice Department and federal judges began to implement these acts in the late 60's and early 70's there was a great deal of confusion and bitterness among folks, a confusion and bitterness which has not abated as your piece documents to this day.
I grew up in what I have come to call the Commonwealth of Pollock, a little upland town with "suburbs" such as Kopp's Flop, Fishville, Travelers' Rest, Simms, and Happy Hollow. At the center of the commonwealth was familia, ecclesia and civitas, with the school being the formal and informal means by which these three institutions collaborated on rearing the young. One of my teachers referred to Pollock as Athens, including, of course, the hinterland. Up Big Creek, on its Dry Prong, was another commonwealth with its hinterland. The same teacher called it Sparta. We did indeed compete in sports, in academics and in girls.
Three forces have worked to destroy these commonwealths and those like them: my generation was the first to leave en masse and not return; the suburbs are reaching out from Alexandria and subsuming the once unique hinterland; and the worst, the one that was the beginning of the end, occurred when federal judge Norman Scott in one fiat decree closed and consolidated the respective high school. Like an angry god, he, with the back of his judicial hand, swept Athens and Sparta off the map.
That is what this redistricting is: it is a destruction of locale and place; it is a moving of the landmarks. These federal judges are as gods; they raise up and they destroy what they will. The immediate source of their power lies in the 1965 Voting Rights Act and in the 1964 Civil Rights Act; however, the deeper source of their power lies in the unconstitutional 14th amendment and the WAR which made it possible. (I am not one of those who believes that we can turn the clock back. The union of constitutionally federated republics is dead; so is, therefore, the Constitution which the constituents thereof ratified for that purpose.)