{"id":13169,"date":"2023-08-05T17:12:33","date_gmt":"2023-08-05T17:12:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=13169"},"modified":"2023-08-05T17:12:33","modified_gmt":"2023-08-05T17:12:33","slug":"texas-government-wont-represent-the-states-population-unless-its-political-maps-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=13169","title":{"rendered":"Texas government won\u2019t represent the state\u2019s population unless its political maps do"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Texas Legislature is drawing new political maps to reflect the growth of the state recorded in the 2020 census. But their initial proposals don’t look like the state demographically or politically.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Ross Ramsey<\/strong><\/em>, Texas Tribune<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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In a state where more than 60% of the residents are people of color, the Texas Legislature is proposing maps where white people have voting majorities in 50% of the congressional districts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s not representative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Texas grew 15.9% over the last decade<\/a>, according to the 2020 census. There are just about 4 million more people in the state now than there were 10 years ago, and 95% of that growth is attributable to people of color.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White people now account for 39.8% of the state population. Hispanic people are just about as numerous \u2014 39.3% \u2014 and demographers expect that part of the population to be the largest part within a year or two. Black Texans, Asian Texans and others make up the remaining fifth of the population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no majority, in other words, and the plurality is about to flip to Hispanics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You wouldn\u2019t be able to prove any of that by looking at the political maps the Texas Legislature is drawing right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Senate committee has already approved (on a straight party-line vote) a new map that has 12 districts with white majorities and another four where the majority of the voting age population \u2014 adults \u2014 are white people. The Hispanic population is about the same size in the state, but not in the plans of the Texas Senate; the map has seven seats where Hispanic residents make up the majority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Four more districts in that new Senate map have majorities of people of color if you add their Black residents and their Hispanic residents together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The remaining four districts don\u2019t have white majorities, Hispanic majorities or Hispanic-plus-Black majorities. They don\u2019t look exactly like the state of Texas, but they\u2019re more like the rest of the state than the other 27 districts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Senate map is just an example; all of the new maps revealed so far were designed with similar disparities between the makeup of the population and the cartographic and political machinations of the state\u2019s officeholders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not just demography. The Texas Legislative Council \u2014 a state agency that draws maps, drafts bills and does other legal work for the Legislature, generates reports on how each district would have voted in the 2020 election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That doesn\u2019t look like Texas, either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, Republican Donald Trump beat Democrat Joe Biden 52% to 45.5%. Trump would have won in 19 of the proposed Senate districts, or 61.3%. Biden would have won in 12, or 38.7%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s not representative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometime during the Legislature\u2019s ongoing special session on redistricting, someone will compare the proposed maps to the current maps \u2014 either in a way that makes the new maps look more fair, or in a way that makes them look like a step backward. Remember, though, that the current maps were contested for many of the same reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This time, 95% of the state\u2019s growth was attributed to people of color. Ten years ago<\/a>, the U.S. census attributed 89% of the state\u2019s growth to people of color. Both times, the increase in Hispanic population in Texas was the main driver. Texas has been growing rapidly for a long time; the 2010 census revealed the population increased 20.6%; the 2020 census found 15.9%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Legislature that convened in 2011 had the same goals, more or less, that this year\u2019s Legislature has: Draw new political districts that reflect the overall growth of the state and the geographic changes in the population. But they had the same biases, too. The Republican majorities wanted to preserve their hold on state government, which is, after all, what political majorities do. And they were more interested in communities and districts of Republicans than they were in communities of color.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were focused, then as now, on winning, and not on that other word \u2014 the one that indicates every Texan is fairly accounted for and has the same political power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Representation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Ross Ramsey<\/a> is executive editor and co-founder of The Texas Tribune<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Texas Legislature is drawing new political maps to reflect the growth of the state recorded in the 2020 census. But their initial proposals don’t look like the state demographically or politically. By Ross Ramsey, […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[85,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-13169","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-politics","9":"tag-texas"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13169"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13170,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13169\/revisions\/13170"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}