DOJ Suing Texas for Discriminatory New Voting Map

[BarryLaverty]

As they should...

(Washington Post)

Justice Dept. sues Texas over redistricting, citing discrimination against Latinos
Justice Department sues Texas over new voting laws

By David Nakamura and Devlin Barrett 
Today at 6:20 p.m. EST

The Justice Department has sued Texas for the second time in a month over voting-related concerns, this time alleging that Republican state lawmakers discriminated against Latinos and other minorities when they approved new congressional and state legislative districts that increased the power of White voters.

Attorney General Merrick Garland’s announcement on Monday marked the Biden administration’s first major legal action on redistricting. It comes at a time when the U.S. House is narrowly controlled by Democrats, many GOP-controlled state legislatures are tightening voting restrictions, and both parties are trying to draw maps to their own advantage ahead of the 2022 midterms and 2024 presidential election.

While the Supreme Court has declined to put limits on partisan gerrymandering, it is illegal to draw lines that are unfair to racial and ethnic minorities.

“This is not the first time Texas has acted to minimize the voting rights of its minority citizens. Decade after decade, Texas has enacted redistricting plans that violate the Voting Rights Act,” the Justice Department said in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Western Division of Texas. “In enacting its 2021 Congressional and House plans, the State has again diluted the voting strength of minority Texans.”

The lawsuit asks the court to bar Texas from holding elections under the redrawn districts and to instruct lawmakers to devise new maps that comply with federal law.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton posted a tweet calling the lawsuit “absurd” and “the Biden Administration’s latest ploy to control Texas voters.”

“I am confident that our legislature’s redistricting decisions will be proven lawful, and this preposterous attempt to sway democracy will fail,” he wrote.

Gerrymandering at center of special session in Maryland, as Republicans cry foul

Texas GOP leaders have previously said the redrawn maps were approved by lawyers who determined that the districts complied with voting laws.

But the maps have also drawn two legal challenges from left-leaning advocacy groups, including one filed last month by a group affiliated with Eric H. Holder Jr., who led the Justice Department during the Obama administration.

Why Texas laws are moving right while its population shifts left

Liberals, frustrated that Republicans in Congress have blocked Democratic bills to expand voting rights safeguards, have pressed Garland to be more aggressive in intervening against attempts from GOP-led states to restrict voting or draw maps that minimize the influence of minority voters.

María Teresa Kumar, president and chief executive of Voto Latino — a plaintiff in the private lawsuit filed by the Holder-affiliated group — said Texas stands to gain millions of dollars in federal funding tied to the population boom. But, she said, the state’s GOP leaders “do not want to allocate not just the resources, but also the political power. . . . If we truly believe the Constitution is about equal enfranchisement, then we should be allocating our districts accordingly. This is egregious, and the fact that the Justice Department is stepping in here is exactly what they are meant to be doing.”

In June, the Justice Department sued Georgia over new statewide voting measures that federal authorities allege purposefully discriminate against African Americans.

And last month, the department sued Texas over a separate law that federal officials say would disenfranchise eligible voters, including older Americans and people with disabilities, by banning 24-hour and drive-through voting and giving partisan poll watchers more access.

Texas lawmakers approved the new voting districts in October after a redistricting process led by Republicans, who control the state Senate and House.

The 2020 Census showed that the Texas population had grown dramatically over the past decade, by nearly 4 million people. Most of that growth was among minority populations, with White Texans accounting for only about 5 percent of the increase.

The growth means that the number of Texas seats in the U.S. House of Representatives will rise from 36 to 38. Texas is the only state to gain two seats. Rather than reflect the surging Latino voting strength in the state, the Justice Department argues, the new districts would unfairly and illegally dilute their representation.  

Latino population growth helps GOP states like Texas gain congressional seats

Texas Republicans didn’t try to draw lines to immediately take seats away from Democrats. Instead, analysts say, they redrew nearly a dozen districts that could have become more competitive over the next decade to ensure that they stay solidly red. The result is that even as those areas of Texas become more demographically diverse, the changes probably won’t be reflected in elections.

“The Justice Department will not stand idly by in the face of unlawful attempts to restrict access to the ballot,” Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said. She accused Texas lawmakers, who developed and approved the redistricting plan in less than three months, of using a rushed legislative process that minimized opportunities for public input.

Michael Li, an elections expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, called the Texas redistricting maps racially discriminatory and said the federal intervention would be a welcome step for communities of color.

But he said the case could prove difficult for the Justice Department given the shift toward more conservative benches in the federal judiciary over the past decade.

“The courts have done a lot of damage to voting rights laws,” Li said.

Read the text of the redistricting lawsuit

For decades, Democratic administrations have sued Texas over how the state handles voting issues, from redistricting to voter access.

Their chances of success were weakened by a Supreme Court ruling in 2013 that effectively ended the requirement that Texas and other states with a history of voter discrimination get preapproval from the Justice Department for new voting district maps drawn after every census.

In his news conference on Monday, Garland called on Congress to reinstate the department’s pre-clearance authority. If Justice still had that legal tool, he said, “we would likely not be here today announcing this complaint.”

Li said the Supreme Court’s decision in 2019 that partisan gerrymandering is a political question, outside the jurisdiction of federal courts, also complicated matters for Democrats.

The ruling “gave Republicans an excuse that, ‘It’s just politics, not race,’ even though most of their decisions adversely affect Blacks, Latinos and Asians,” he said.

[RETIREDFAN1]

Another looming court defeat for the Biden administration..........

[DannyZuco]

What do you expect from a democratic administration. If it isn't socialistic, then they sue. Anything to destroy state rights. 

[KirtFalcon]

Garland is nothing but a liberal political hack.  So blessed we kept him off the Supreme Court  ....

[RETIREDFAN1]

9 minutes ago, KirtFalcon said:

Garland is nothing but a liberal political hack.  So blessed we kept him off the Supreme Court  ....

Amen.....

[Youngcoach123]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/05/us/texas-election-results.html

 

Latinos deliver Republican win in Texas. And from the trash slimes. Guess that makes your article pretty dumb.

[BarryLaverty]

3 hours ago, KirtFalcon said:

Garland is nothing but a liberal political hack.  So blessed we kept him off the Supreme Court  ....

As opposed to the obviously political not judicial scholars Trump threw on there? 

[KirtFalcon]

4 minutes ago, BarryLaverty said:

As opposed to the obviously political not judicial scholars Trump threw on there? 

Absolutely  .... President Trump’s greatest accomplishments were his Supreme Court appointees  .....

We don't need slime like Garland on the high court ....

Edited December 7, 2021 by KirtFalcon
yo mama

[blesseddaily]

Fantastic news...thanks for posting Barry...it just means that Texas is doing things right.!!! 

[Monte1076]

I want to see Barry complain about the Democratic states that are Gerrymandering as well.

Think we will?

I'm guessing that somehow "That's different".

[KirtFalcon]

8 minutes ago, Monte1076 said:

I want to see Barry complain about the Democratic states that are Gerrymandering as well.

Think we will?

I'm guessing that somehow "That's different".

The means justify the ends in Larry's bizarro Twilight Zone  ....

[RETIREDFAN1]

20 minutes ago, Monte1076 said:

I want to see Barry complain about the Democratic states that are Gerrymandering as well.

Think we will?

I'm guessing that somehow "That's different".

That's what libnuts consider social justice.......

[PepeSilvia]

I think there should be no states allowed to gerrymander regardless of which party is in charge. An independent (which would be hard to find) or bipartisan commission should draw the lines or at least be able to have some say in how the lines are drawn. The way the Texas map looks is flat out cheating and discriminatory. That’s the only way the GOP can keep such a majority in Texas. 

[BarryLaverty]

2 hours ago, Monte1076 said:

I want to see Barry complain about the Democratic states that are Gerrymandering as well.

Think we will?

I'm guessing that somehow "That's different".

I am absolutely against gerrymandering by either party. If President Biden's national voting bill were to pass, independent commissions would draw lines, with judges reviewing their maps, if needed. 

[Monte1076]

1 minute ago, BarryLaverty said:

I am absolutely against gerrymandering by either party. If President Biden's national voting bill were to pass, independent commissions would draw lines, with judges reviewing their maps, if needed. 

And what criteria would they use to make those districts "fair"? What would the data/algorithm look like?

[BarryLaverty]

5 minutes ago, Monte1076 said:

And what criteria would they use to make those districts "fair"? What would the data/algorithm look like?

Read up. 
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2020/11/fairmandering-draws-fair-districts-using-data-science

Cornell Chronicle

 

‘Fairmandering’ method draws fair districts using data science

By Melanie Lefkowitz |

 November 24, 2020

 

It’s almost impossible for humans to draw unbiased maps, even when they’re trying.

A new mathematical method developed by Cornell researchers can inject fairness into the fraught process of political redistricting – and proves that it takes more than good intent to create a fair and representative district.

The two-step method, described in the paper, “Fairmandering: A Column Generation Heuristic for Fairness Optimized Political Districting,” first creates billions of potential electoral maps for each state, and then algorithmically identifies a range of possibilities meeting the desired criteria for fairness.

“Fairmandering” won the INFORMS Undergraduate Operations Research Prize, awarded to the best undergraduate paper, at the Nov. 8-11 INFORMS Annual Meeting, the leading meeting of operations research and analytics professionals. First author is Wes Gurnee ’20, now a software engineer at Google.

The American congressional district system empowers politicians to manipulate district boundaries in order to influence election results. Districts may be drawn by the party in power to include large numbers of people in their party, a process known as gerrymandering, swaying the outcome of elections and determining political control at the local and national level.

It’s an urgent issue – especially as states prepare for the decennial redistricting next year, based on the results of the 2020 census.

“Advances in data science have helped the parties get better and better at designing districts to keep political control,” said co-author David Shmoys, the Laibe/Acheson Professor of Business Management and Leadership Studies in the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering. “We wanted to offer a completely different perspective that goes to the core of what it means to do a fair districting, and to put algorithmic tools in policymakers’ hands that allow them to do the right thing.”

In the research, the largest-ever study of legal congressional district maps, Gurnee and Shmoys sought to create election maps with fair outcomes – those that accurately reflect a state’s political leanings, create enough competitive races to ensure accountability and treat each party symmetrically.

Past research has sought to use computational methods to draw unbiased districts. But these efforts have ignored political and demographic factors, assuming that so-called “compact” districts – those constructed in regular shapes based on location – would be fair.

But even then, the researchers found, the demographic and political composition of the district is likely not representative of the political leanings of the entire state.

“Historically, there has been this belief that a map drawn randomly, with no political bias or partisan data, is inherently fair,” Gurnee said. “While it’s true that these maps are blind to partisan bias, they’re not free from partisan bias.”

Rather than making reasonably shaped districts the goal, the researchers built in shape as one factor of their model, which can rapidly generate billions of possible electoral maps for each state.

“You need a rich enough set of ways to put the puzzle together so that you have a diversity of possible outcomes,” Shmoys said, “but you also need it to be expressive enough to give you the range of fairness outcomes that you want.”

Once they’ve generated the maps, the researchers used the tools of integer programming – a mathematical modeling framework for which recent advances allowed them to solve a very large-scale problem – to evaluate the maps for fairness.

Though the researchers chose a balanced representation of political affiliation as their definition of fairness in the study, other demographic factors could be considered. The model could also apply to state and local representative maps, in addition to congressional districts.

Gurnee has started an organization, called Fairmandering, to advance the principles of the research.

“It’s not the geographic shape of the district that’s important – it’s really thinking about more holistic principles of what it means to do a fair districting,” Shmoys said. “We’re hoping this will really impact the conversation that’s going to be taking place state by state over the next year and a half, both at the congressional level and the state legislative level.”

[ctown81]

2 hours ago, Monte1076 said:

I want to see Barry complain about the Democratic states that are Gerrymandering as well.

Think we will?

I'm guessing that somehow "That's different".

Make sure the rest of you hold yourselves to that same standard.

[Monte1076]

13 minutes ago, BarryLaverty said:

Read up. 
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2020/11/fairmandering-draws-fair-districts-using-data-science

Cornell Chronicle

 

‘Fairmandering’ method draws fair districts using data science

By Melanie Lefkowitz |

 November 24, 2020

 

It’s almost impossible for humans to draw unbiased maps, even when they’re trying.

A new mathematical method developed by Cornell researchers can inject fairness into the fraught process of political redistricting – and proves that it takes more than good intent to create a fair and representative district.

The two-step method, described in the paper, “Fairmandering: A Column Generation Heuristic for Fairness Optimized Political Districting,” first creates billions of potential electoral maps for each state, and then algorithmically identifies a range of possibilities meeting the desired criteria for fairness.

“Fairmandering” won the INFORMS Undergraduate Operations Research Prize, awarded to the best undergraduate paper, at the Nov. 8-11 INFORMS Annual Meeting, the leading meeting of operations research and analytics professionals. First author is Wes Gurnee ’20, now a software engineer at Google.

The American congressional district system empowers politicians to manipulate district boundaries in order to influence election results. Districts may be drawn by the party in power to include large numbers of people in their party, a process known as gerrymandering, swaying the outcome of elections and determining political control at the local and national level.

It’s an urgent issue – especially as states prepare for the decennial redistricting next year, based on the results of the 2020 census.

“Advances in data science have helped the parties get better and better at designing districts to keep political control,” said co-author David Shmoys, the Laibe/Acheson Professor of Business Management and Leadership Studies in the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering. “We wanted to offer a completely different perspective that goes to the core of what it means to do a fair districting, and to put algorithmic tools in policymakers’ hands that allow them to do the right thing.”

In the research, the largest-ever study of legal congressional district maps, Gurnee and Shmoys sought to create election maps with fair outcomes – those that accurately reflect a state’s political leanings, create enough competitive races to ensure accountability and treat each party symmetrically.

Past research has sought to use computational methods to draw unbiased districts. But these efforts have ignored political and demographic factors, assuming that so-called “compact” districts – those constructed in regular shapes based on location – would be fair.

But even then, the researchers found, the demographic and political composition of the district is likely not representative of the political leanings of the entire state.

“Historically, there has been this belief that a map drawn randomly, with no political bias or partisan data, is inherently fair,” Gurnee said. “While it’s true that these maps are blind to partisan bias, they’re not free from partisan bias.”

Rather than making reasonably shaped districts the goal, the researchers built in shape as one factor of their model, which can rapidly generate billions of possible electoral maps for each state.

“You need a rich enough set of ways to put the puzzle together so that you have a diversity of possible outcomes,” Shmoys said, “but you also need it to be expressive enough to give you the range of fairness outcomes that you want.”

Once they’ve generated the maps, the researchers used the tools of integer programming – a mathematical modeling framework for which recent advances allowed them to solve a very large-scale problem – to evaluate the maps for fairness.

Though the researchers chose a balanced representation of political affiliation as their definition of fairness in the study, other demographic factors could be considered. The model could also apply to state and local representative maps, in addition to congressional districts.

Gurnee has started an organization, called Fairmandering, to advance the principles of the research.

“It’s not the geographic shape of the district that’s important – it’s really thinking about more holistic principles of what it means to do a fair districting,” Shmoys said. “We’re hoping this will really impact the conversation that’s going to be taking place state by state over the next year and a half, both at the congressional level and the state legislative level.”

And do you think that wouldn't be manipulated somehow?

What if a state (or states) wanted to implement their own system? Would they be able to?