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Texas
Related: About this forumTXGOP's anti-Latino redistricting scheme exposed in emails
http://www.salon.com/2014/07/14/texas_gops_secret_anti_hispanic_plot_smoking_gun_emails_revealed/On Nov. 17, 2010, Eric Opiela sent an email to Gerard Interiano. A Texas Republican Party associate general counsel, Opiela served at that time as a campaign adviser to the states speaker of the House Joe Straus, R-San Antonio; he was about to become the man who state lawmakers understood spoke on behalf of the Republican Congressmen from Texas, according to minority voting-rights plaintiffs, who have sued Texas for discriminating against them.
A few weeks before receiving Opielas email, Interiano had started as counsel to Straus office. He was preparing to assume top responsibility for redrawing the states political maps; he would become the one person on whom the states redistricting credibility rests, according to Texas brief in voting-rights litigation.
In the Nov. 17, 2010, email, Opelia asked Interiano to look for specific data about Hispanic populations and voting patterns.
These metrics would be useful to identify the nudge factor by which one can analyze which census blocks, when added to a particular district [they] help pull the districts Total Hispanic pop to majority status, but leave the Spanish surname RV [registered voters] and TO [turnout] the lowest, Opiela writes to the mapmaker.
(...)
Two years and seven months after that email exchange and one year ago on June 25, 2013 the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 5-4 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder,which struck down a provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that had allowed the federal government to pre-clear redistricting maps proposed by Texas and other states with a history of discriminating against minority voters.
In a follow-up email on Nov. 19, 2010, Opiela explained to Interiano that he called his proposed strategy: OHRVS or Optimal Hispanic Republican Voting Strength. Opiela defined the acronym-friendly term as, a measure of how Hispanic, and[,] at the same time[,] Republican we can make a particular census block.
Lawyers for the African-American and Hispanic voting-rights plaintiffs consider Opiela emails a smoking gun. The correspondence will play a starring role at a trial scheduled to start today in a San Antonio federal court in a redistricting case, Perez v. Perry. The litigation pits the plaintiffs, who have been joined by the Obama administration, against Texas and its Republican state leaders, including Gov. Rick Perry in his official capacity.
And more from me:
http://brainsandeggs.blogspot.com/2014/07/txgops-anti-latino-redistricting-scheme.html
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TXGOP's anti-Latino redistricting scheme exposed in emails (Original Post)
PDittie
Jul 2014
OP
Gothmog
(145,046 posts)1. Trial started today for this case
Intent to discriminate will be an issue
PDittie
(8,322 posts)2. More on that here from the Dallas Snooze