Questions about pending Supreme Court case on redistricting

[Ken Burch]

1)If the Delay redistricting plan for the Texas congressional delegation were thrown out by the Supreme Court(a long shot I realize, but humor me here for a moment)would there have to be special elections for all the Texas Congressional seats immediately, or would there just have to be new lines drawn in time for 2006?

2)If new lines had to be drawn, would the same Republican Texas Legislature get to draw them, or would the Court draw lines itself?
or would this be handled by the Justice Department(controlled by Torture Boy Gonzales)?

[sonias]

1. Not a pretty plan either way Ken

I think you're right to be hopeful. We do at least have one swing member on SCOTUS who is troubled by the gerrymandering. Maybe they finally do something about it.

The way I understand it, is that they would probably have to redraw the districts for the '06 elections. Congressmen and women elected now would serve out their terms. If the TX Legislature is in session I'm sure they would have plenty of time to draw it themselves. That's been their defense of why they did redistricting again (in '04) in the first place. The court drew the district lines in '01 when they couldn't come to an agreement in the legislature. They claim that they had to do it in the legislature, after the courts did it, because it was their legislative duty to revisit that. Yeah right, they didn't have any problem having the court draw the state districts in '01.

Keep in mind that they have powerful new software that they use to almost instantaneously tweak to get the numbers they want. SCOTUS has got to come down pretty hard on defining gerrymandering clearly to keep them from continuing to use that software to pack districts.

I just don't think SCOTUS wants to open that can of worms. And as you said DOJ, determines if the Voting Rights Act has been violated, which they already rubber-stamped. We can't expect DOJ to reach a different conclusion than the first one they mangled.

Sonia