Well, maybe not in those words, but the Department of Justice has made it clear (PDF) in a brief to a court deciding on a summary judgment requested by the Republicans that they are bad for Texas. Here are some of the highlights:
· Texas’s statement of undisputed facts is devoid of evidence or assertions in support of its claim that the proposed State House and Congressional plans lack a discriminatory purpose, in apparent non-compliance with Local Rule 7.
· There is ample circumstantial evidence of a discriminatory purpose with regard to both the State House and Congressional plans to establish a clear and genuine dispute of material facts.
· The United States contends that a purpose of the proposed State House redistricting plan is to eliminate minority communities’ ability to elect their candidate of choice in districts won by candidates not preferred by the minority voters in the watershed 2010 election.
· Therefore, there are genuine disputes whether proposed Districts 35, 41, and 117 provide Hispanic voters with the ability to elect their candidates of choice in the proposed plan and whether District 149 provides minority voters with the ability to elect their candidate of choice.
· In addition, the plan is intended to prevent the emergence of new ability-to-elect districts in Dallas and Harris Counties. The proposed House redistricting plan also splits precincts in a manner that strongly evinces race-based intent, rather than a partisan purpose.
· The boundaries of proposed District 41 split fourteen precincts and include 69.5% of the Anglo VAP of the split precincts but only 40.2% of the Hispanic VAP of the split precincts. See Arrington Rep. at 30 tbl. 11. The line drawers claimed that they relied on a legislator’s local political knowledge when drawing the district. See Perez Tr. 1001:23-1002:5 (Downton); Interiano Dep. At 185:18-190:1. However the incumbent in that District denied guiding more than the small splits that included his home and excluded the legislator currently representing the District and admitted a lack of local political knowledge concerning the split precincts. See Peña Dep. At 97:16-102:15, 157:5-173:4
· Representative John Garza of District 117, in Bexar County, rejected inclusion of Hispanics in politically organized portions of the City of San Antonio and told Representative Joe Farias of neighboring District 118 that he needed “more Mexicans in [his] district.”
· The splitting of well-organized Hispanic communities in Maverick and Bexar Counties and substitution with areas that are equallyHispanic, but not politically organized, made it possible to decrease the ability of Hispanic voters to elect a candidate of their choice while still maintaining the illusion of a district with sufficient Hispanic voting age population to control elections.
· The proposed Congressional plan also removes hundreds of thousands of minority voters from districts that provide them with the ability to elect candidates of choice. Under the proposed plan, 479,704 fewer Hispanics would reside in such districts.
I agree with the Anthony Gutierrez at the Texas Democratic Party on this.
The illegal Republican gerrymanders are meant to protect specific candidates at the expense of voters protected under the Voting Rights Act. After repeatedly voting against the interests of every day Texans, Republicans are using every trick in the book to try and pre-determine the outcome of elections.”
There’s no doubt that Republican Latinos were splicing off Latinos from their districts because it’s the only way they might be able to win in 2012. Bottom line: Latinos in these districts are Democrats, and these repu-vendidos know it.
