Texas violated voting rights law during redistricting, retiring state GOP senator says

[LetMyPeopleVote]

The Texas primary is going to be held on March 1 using the illegal and gerrymandered districts passed by the Texas legislature. There will be a hearing on Senate District 10 but the rest of the gerrymandered districts will be in place for the next two years.

The SCOTUS has gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act which required pre-clearance of districts. The SCOTUS held that partisan gerrymandering is okay and also partially gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by requiring proof of discrimination. There will be a trial in the fall and this statement will used to show intent to discriminate.

Link to tweet

EL PASO — In a sworn declaration submitted as part of an ongoing federal court challenge, a senior Republican state senator with redistricting experience said he believes his party violated federal voting laws when it drew new boundaries for state Senate District 10 in the Fort Worth area.

“Having participated in the 2011 and 2013 Senate Select Redistricting Committee proceedings, and having read the prior federal court decision regarding SD10, it was obvious to me that the renewed effort to dismantle SD 10 violated the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution,” state Sen. Kel Seliger said in a declaration signed in November.

The statement from the Amarillo Republican emerged this week as part of a dayslong hearing before a three-judge panel considering a lawsuit that claims the district was intentionally reconfigured to discriminate against voters of color in Tarrant County.

Under the map passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature, some Black and Hispanic populations previously in District 10 were split into two other districts with majority-white electorates. The Black and Hispanic voters who remain in the newly drawn District 10, in urban areas of south Fort Worth, were lumped in with several rural, mostly white counties to the south and west that drive up the district’s population of white eligible voters while diminishing the number of voters of color.

This trial will be fun to watch.

[JustAnotherGen]

1. Of course they did

It's what they do

[gratuitous]

2. If only it was against the law to break the law

We'd have those Republicans then, boy! This has been the Republican pattern for the last decade or so, raised to the nth degree in Texas (remember Tom DeLay?). Gerrymander the hell out of the map, but submit the plan too late for anything to be done about it, conduct yet another election under this crooked system, and let the resulting non-representative legislature come up with another map for the next election. Submit the new horribly gerrymandered map too late for anything to be done about it, conduct another election, and let the next crooked legislature do it all over again.

This is precisely the sort of shenanigans that the now-unconstitutional Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act was supposed to curtail. Luckily, Chief Justice Roberts isn't interested in re-visiting his faulty reasoning from that case, so onward we go!

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. Retiring GOP Texas Senator Kel Seliger has testified under oath

Link to tweet