Texas case could change how the country votes

AUSTIN – It’s hard to imagine a redder version of the Lone Star State, but the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday will hear arguments in a Texas case that could reshape election maps here and across the country.

The case, Evenwel vs. Abbott, challenges how state legislative districts are drawn. 

The plaintiffs, who are Texas residents Sue Evenwel and Edward Pfenninger, suggest that it should be based on an equal count of the number of potential voters in an area.

Districts are now carved up by the total number of people living in an area

The change could alter more than half of the legislative districts in the country, according to one analysis. 

“If the plaintiffs win, it would be a huge deal,” said Richard L. Hasen, an expert in election law at the University of California in Irvine. “It helps rural areas that tend to be Republican.”  

Redrawn districts would shift power to areas with lower portions of non-citizens and children under 18, according to a recent report by Andrew Beveridge, a sociologist at City University of New York.

“There would be a general shift from Democrat to Republican, and there might be even more impact in terms of the concerns of each party, as fewer Hispanic and parents with children would have a voice, while the influence of the childless and non-Hispanic communities would grow,” Beveridge wrote. 

In Texas, the change will potentially add one Republican state senator and seven GOP state representatives, according to his analysis. 

David Guinn, who studies voting rights and constitutional law at Baylor Law School, said changing the approach begs a significant question: What numbers do you use to draw districts? 

“The only damn number we have is the U.S. Census. What number would we use?” he said.

According to the Census, while unauthorized migrants are implicitly counted in population estimates, it’s not possible to count them precisely. <<cq>>

Redrawing districts on the basis of citizenship will yield fewer majority-Latino districts, experts agree.

Some districts could end up with far more people than others, depending on the numbers of children and non-eligible residents living there 

In his election-law blog, Hasen called the plaintiff’s argument “an attempted Republican power grab.”

Rice University political scientist Mark Jones said he believes the Supreme Court took the case to clarify the law, not to make a dramatic about-face. 

Hasen said data aren’t available to break out voters from others living in legislative districts, which is one reason that he doesn’t think there will be a change.

 

The case arose from two Texas Senate districts, one outside Austin and the other in East Texas. 

 

In a nutshell, the plaintiffs argued that their votes were diluted because their districts had the same number of senators as districts with the same number of people, but half the registered voters. 

 

Still, even though the case stems from a legislative districting fight in Texas, experts say its rationale almost certainly will be widely applied if the plaintiffs win. 

 

“This principle would apply across the board, once you decide the proper metric is U.S. citizenship,” Jones said. “It would actually down to city council districts.” 

John Austin covers the Texas Statehouse for CNHI. Contact him at jaustin@cnhi.com.