redistricting (Houston, San Antonio, Austin: college, centers, suburbs)

[oldtoiletsmkgdflrpots]

Any thoughts on the Austin area redistricting or is this more of a Texas forum thing?

[JayBrown80]

Originally Posted by oldtoiletsmkgdflrpots

Any thoughts on the Austin area redistricting or is this more of a Texas forum thing?

Do you mean the federal re-districting plans for congressional seats?

[oldtoiletsmkgdflrpots]

Originally Posted by JayBrown80

Do you mean the federal re-districting plans for congressional seats?

Yes.

[die Eichkatze]

Being a conservative person, I'm glad that I'm in district 21....

With that being said, I find the districts and the whole process to be a sham. Splitting Travis County like they have is wrong, just like it was wrong when the democrats did the same thing to conservative Tarrant County in the early 90's.
Sheila Jackson Lee's district in Houston is a freaking joke, along with several others (ie district 35). Perfectly crooked districts for perfectly crooked politicians...all of them.

[owlman]

I looked at it and I thought "man what a crazy map", but then again it ain't much crazier than the current one. I feel resigned indifference about it, that it's something in politics that isn't going away anytime soon.

[SeaToby]

If you look at the latest maps the court decided on for the late spring primary, all but a few districts reach to the four major cities and their suburbs out of the 36 districts. Its creating the minority districts which are the most gerrymandered districts, that is jaggered precinct by precinct through the urban cities.

Otherwise, as the Supreme Court ruled, most of the districts involve regional political matters, hooking Amarillo with Wichita Falls, and Lubbock with Abilene. In the non major four urban areas, the state legislated regional cities, or pairs of regional cities, as centers of those districts. Such as Tyler and Lufkin, Texarkana and Sherman, San Angelo and Del Rio, Laredo, New Allen, Brownsville, Denton, Waco, Killen and Temple, Corpus Christi and Victoria, Beaumont and Galveston, College Station, etc...

They have to split the big urban areas because that is where the population is, as the rural areas don't have enough population. Notice how there is a rural district stretching from the NW corner of the panhandle to the Fort Worth suburbs along the Red River, and from outside the El Paso suburbs to the San Antonio suburbs along the Rio Grande. There is a district which stretches south of Austin all the way to the southern Fort Worth suburbs.