Monthly Archives: November 2011

Texas AG slams activist Federal Court for overstepping bounds in redrawing redistricting plan

Link is here: Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office on Friday slammed an interim redistricting map proposed by a three-judge panel in San Antonio, saying the federal jurists overstepped their bounds in redrawing House and Senate district lines that could cost Republicans a half-dozen seats next year.

“Contrary to (a) basic principle of federalism, the proposed interim redistricting plan consistently overturns the Legislature’s will where no probability of a legal wrong has been identified,” Lauren Bean, a spokeswoman for Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, said in a statement.

and this:


The proposed interim map appears to have most heavily impacted state House districts in the Houston area.


Republicans could lose as many as three Houston-area seats under the court’s proposed map, which also undid the Legislature’s merger of two majority-minority districts that are represented by Democrats.


The Legislature’s merger of Democrats Scott Hochberg and Hubert Vo’s southwest Houston districts was one of the items that Justice Department’s lawyers identified as a Voting Rights Act violation.


The proposed House, which was endorsed by two of the three judges, also would place Republican Reps. Beverly Wooley and Rep. Jim Murphy into a single district.


“I don’t think the Democratic Party could have hoped to have a plan drawn like this if they controlled the Legislature,” said Paul Bettencourt, a former executive with the state Republican Party and former Harris County tax assessor.

Kansas Secretary of State Kobach pushes for implementation of citizen verification in early 2012

In Kansas, a group called KanVote is kicking off a statewide campaign against efforts to require proof of citizenship for voters starting in 2012.

Legislation passed earlier this year calls for that portion of the new voter I.D. law to go into effect in 2013, after the presidential election. However, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is pushing to implement that requirement starting in March 2012



Justice Department: When Texas targets voter fraud, is it really targeting Democrats?

At the Dallas Morning News. Wayne Slater alludes that Republicans are pushing voter ID laws because they feel Democrats are more apt to commit voter fraud, and, as a result, the Obama Justice Department is fighting voter ID laws to protect Democrats from these efforts to fight voter fraud.  Occam’s Razor.

The Justice Department says Texas needs to provide some more information to assure the state’s new voter ID law won’t discriminate against minorities. Under the new law, Texans will have to present a photo ID to vote. The Republican Legislature passed the law, saying it was aimed at voter fraud. Democrats have fought it, saying it’s about discouraging minorities — who vote mostly Democrat – from voting. The Justice Department is required by law to make sure new voting laws in the South don’t discriminate against blacks and Hispanics.

If the Justice Department wants data about how it applies its voter laws, one place to look is Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott. Abbott has led the state’s defense of the voter ID law. Several years ago, Abbott announced there was an “epidemic” of voter fraud in Texas and he launched an investigation. Abbott found 26 cases to prosecute – all against Democrats, all but one against blacks or Hispanics. Of those, two-thirds were technical violations in which voters were eligible, votes were properly cast and no vote was changed. Not exactly an epidemic. But a spokesman for Abbott defended his crackdown on vote fraud, saying it’s a very real problem. Word is that Abbott is preparing to run for governor in 2014, and the voter ID law is very popular among Republicans. The law is supposed to take effect next year, before the March primary in Texas. But unless the state can satisfy the federal government that it wouldn’t discriminate, it could be delayed for awhile

True the Vote responds to smears and explains its goals

@ the link. The King Street Patriots, a conservative group, began a True the Vote” campaign in 2009 to prevent voter fraud. Volunteers train to become poll watchers to ensure the election laws are obeyed at the polls.

This Sunday, the Houston Chronicle’s Outlook section featured a full front page story about vote suppression. The article was written by Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of The Advancement Project and Christina Sanders, Texas State Director of The League of Young Voters. It was titled “Partisan Tactic Could Suppress Voting”. They were talking about the King Street Patriots, and True the Vote. Here is an excerpt:


“To complement the voter suppression efforts, tea party-affiliated groups such as the Houston-based King Street Patriots have vowed to send individuals to observe activities at polling places, which could intimidate voters. Hundreds of volunteers have pledged their time to travel to polling stations, question the rights of fellow Texans to cast their ballots and disrupt polling-place activity if they deem it necessary. The idea of tea party volunteers storming polling places evokes strong images of Jim Crow-era voter suppression.”


As someone who grew up in the middle of the civil rights movement in the 60′s in Jackson Mississippi, that last sentence made my blood boil. The Democrat’s Jim Crow laws were specifically directed at preventing African Americans to vote. To compare that to people who are simply poll watchers (most grandmothers and grandfathers, who could not care less about the color of skin), is despicable, and Judith Browne and Christina Sanders should be ashamed. To compare these good people to that time period diminishes what our great civil rights leaders fought against. It diminishes true racism. How do we teach our children what true racism is, when we point to things like this, where there is no racism? Our children start to think either everything is racist, or nothing is. And that is simply wrong.

There is a reason the King Street Patriots started True the Vote. Notwithstanding the overt corruption of ACORN and their voter registration fraud, the Patriots had seen it themselves here when they began in Houston in 2009. They saw Election Officials fail to check voters’ identification, and disregard polling documentation requirements. They saw these officials routinely accompany voters to the voting booth telling them who they should vote for, and even voting FOR THEM. All these things are against election laws. There is a reason we have poll watchers. But in so many districts, no one has volunteered to monitor, and all these violations have been ignored.


These things don’t just happen in black neighborhoods, they happen everywhere, and they need to be monitored everywhere. Not one of the King Street Patriots intimidated anyone, nor did they wish to. All they wanted and want is for the laws to be obeyed

Georgia Secretary of State says voter ID laws are needed to prevent fraud at the polls

At the link, the Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp responded to Democrat Party concerns over voter identification laws. Interesting enough, it should be noted that there has not been any meltdown in the turnout of minority groups since the Georgia photo ID laws were implemented years ago.  In fact, turnout has increased.

Georgia’s secretary of state has responded to a letter by U.S. House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer expressing concern about the enactment in recent years of state voter identification laws by saying tough rules are needed to prevent fraud at the polls.

Kemp says he believes that enacting laws to protect the integrity of elections while ensuring the constitutional right to vote is a nonpartisan responsibility.

Secretary of State Brian Kemp released his response on Thursday to the letter from Hoyer, saying stricter identification requirements enacted by Georgia and other states are needed to deal with attempts to commit voter fraud.

Hoyer’s letter, signed by nearly 200 members of Congress, says recent restrictions are largely partisan in nature. It urges election officials to put partisan considerations aside.

One man, one vote, a multimillion-dollar utility district

@ the link, truly one man, one vote.

Gary Bechtol is a powerful man in these parts; these parts being the Williamson-Liberty Hill Municipal Utility District. Just recently, he single-handedly approved the local property tax rate and the issuance of $84.7 million in bonds.

Not bad for a framing contractor who’s only lived here a few months; “here” being a mobile home (a nice mobile home, but a mobile home) at the end of a short gravel road (a nice gravel road, but a gravel road) leading from County Road 266.


Bechtol’s power derives from the sainted seat of power in America: the ballot box. More specifically, it derives from the fact that Bechtol was the only voter who showed up at the ballot box when the tax rate and bond issues were approved. But when Bechtol voted early for the Nov. 8 election, turnout hit 100 percent.

Black Dems lose clout in southern capitols as Democrats lose favor in the region

A must read article at CBS that discusses the impact of heightened racial polarization and the impact of the Voting Rights Act applied in its current form.  The article is asserting that Black reliance on the Democratic Party has resulted in a dramatic reduction of influence in the south that parallels the general reduction of influence by the Democrat Party as a whole.  Read the whole article. 

Black lawmakers have lost clout in Southern state capitols as their overwhelming allegiance to the Democratic Party has left them without power in increasingly GOP-controlled state legislatures.  The nonpartisan Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies says in a report issued Friday that despite Barack Obama’s election as president, black voters and elected officials in the South have less influence now than at any time since the civil rights era.

More: Bositis points out state legislatures are increasingly divided along racial lines — making Republican synonymous with whites and Democrat and black interchangeable. According to the report, a majority of Democrats in both chambers in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi are black. In half of the southern state legislative chambers, blacks are a majority or near-majority of Democratic members.  “This begs the question, ‘what is the purpose of having a legislative black caucus when the majority of members in your legislative body are black?'” the report says.

It’s a phenomenon unique to the South, as a majority of black state lawmakers serving in legislative bodies outside of the region belong to the party in charge, the report says.

“That’s one of the costs of putting all your political capital in a single party,” said Emory University professor Merle Black, who is currently researching the rise of the Republican party in the South. “When the Democrats were in power, there was a period there when black lawmakers were very influential.”  That era is over, at least for now, Black said.

“Unless the Democrats can work out some kind of deal with the Republicans, the issues that African Americans want to get passed along would have to have enough support among Republicans to pass them,” he said.

Kansas state Rep. Barbara Ballard, who chairs the state House Democratic Caucus and is president of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, said Southern black lawmakers who find themselves on the margins of power need to get more creative to remain effective.

“When you have smaller numbers, you work harder and you work smarter,” said Ballard, who has served in the Kansas House for 19 years. “We still have to represent our constituents. Just because someone else is running the agenda, if we weren’t there, they would totally control everything.”  Ballard said neither black lawmakers nor their constituents can afford to look at the odds and throw up their hands.

“Look at history,” she said. “When African Americans were not able to get what they wanted, they found another avenue to increase the numbers and they started putting the pressure on. We need to look at a wider definition of clout and influence outside of the statehouse.”

Chris Jankowski, president of the Republican State Leadership Committee, said that without question, the Voting Rights Act as applied to redistricting has led to the consolidation of a key voting bloc in the Democratic Party: African Americans.

“The effect of that is, in the South, to weaken the ability in the party to compete in other districts,” Jankowski said. “It does have an unintended, but very clear impact on Republican prospects.”

Georgia Democratic state Rep. Tyrone Brooks remembers a different dynamic at the state Capitol. First elected in 1980, Brooks has mostly served under Democratic rule at the General Assembly, including on the influential appropriations committee, where he helped write the budget.

Based on his seniority, he could get things done, bringing his issues to the floor and getting them passed and signed into the law. “Being in the minority, it’s not pleasant,” Brooks said. “The perception across the state is the Democratic Party is the party of black folk. When you have a racially polarized body politic, race becomes a major factor. Where we are today is a step backwards.”

In recent years, Republicans have taken over Georgia state government and now control the governor’s office and both chambers of the Legislature.  Today, Brooks no longer serves on the appropriations committee. Despite serving in the Georgia House for more than three decades, he said he has a hard time getting buy-in from his Republican colleagues — many of whom he has known and worked alongside for years.

“You have to work extremely hard if you’re a Democrat to get anything done,” Brooks said.

White Democrats are fewer and far between in Southern statehouses. More than a dozen state lawmakers in five states defected to the GOP right after the 2010 midterm elections, underscoring dissatisfaction with Obama and the Democrats amid high unemployment and following a contentious fight over health care reform.

Before the 1994 midterm elections, nearly all black lawmakers served in the majority. Even prior to the 2010 midterm elections, about half of black state legislators in the South were in the majority, the report says. Now, only about 5 percent are in the majority.

And of the 318 black state legislators in the South, only three are Republican, according to the center.  “Virtually all black elected officials in the region are outsiders looking in,” the report claims.

The trend has strengthened the GOP’s hand in redistricting fights. Black Democrats have accused majority-Republicans in several Southern states of reducing their overall influence by packing more African-American voters than needed into black-majority districts drawn to comply with the Voting Rights Act. Several of these battles are shifting to the courts.

The report goes on to assert that Republican-controlled Southern legislatures are both failing to address the needs of blacks in areas such as health care and education, and leading “an assault on voting rights through photo identification laws and other means.” Republicans reject the charges, saying they are only trying to maintain the integrity of the voting process.

Jankowski said Southern Democrats are hurt less by racially polarized politics than by the social disparity between the region and national party.  “The Southern states, both culturally and on other issues, are more conservative than the rest of the country,” Jankowski said. “It is hard as a Democrat, whether you’re an African American or not, to defend the national Democratic Party in Southern communities at times.”

Jankowski added that Republican governors and majorities in state houses are pro-right-to-work, pro-growth and for lower taxes — positions they believe will serve as a rising tide that lifts all boats.

“They believe … the best way to get their economies going is to pursue those policies that apply equally to everyone,” he said. “I would not concede the premise that one group of people are not being addressed and others are.”

Experts say reduced black influence in Southern state capitols is not irreversible. Demographic patterns suggest an increasing number of potential minority voters such as Latinos, which could work to the advantage of African American lawmakers.

“Republicans don’t have an appeal beyond whites,” Black said. “The voting electorates in these states are becoming more diverse, and the share of the white voting population is a declining majority. That’s a factor that could potentially help Democrats.”

Brooks agreed, but said that the black electorate will also be a key to reversing the trend.

“The
re’s really not full participation by those we’re trying to help,” Brooks said. “When you talk about the loss of power and where we are today, a lot of that translates to the lack of participation by the very people who need our help the most. In so many ways, they’ve become their own worst enemy.”