The Latino population in Texas is driving demographic growth in our state, representing 95% of total growth. Maps reflecting white voting majorities in half of all proposed congressional districts simply disenfranchise this community. The problem here, of course, is that greater concern for whites plays out in every arena of public policy, impacting the well-being of our state, as a whole.

-Angela Valenzuela

Analysis: Texas government won’t represent the state’s population unless its political maps do

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 SEPT. 30, 2021

Crowds march through Austin in celebration of Martin Luther King Day on Jan. 20, 2020. Credit: Jordan Vonderhaar for The Texas Tribune

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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.

That’s not representative.

Texas grew 15.9% over the last decade, 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.

White people now account for 39.8% of the state population. Hispanic people are just about as numerous — 39.3% — 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.

There is no majority, in other words, and the plurality is about to flip to Hispanics.

You wouldn’t be able to prove any of that by looking at the political maps the Texas Legislature is drawing right now.

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 — adults — 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.

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.

The remaining four districts don’t have white majorities, Hispanic majorities or Hispanic-plus-Black majorities. They don’t look exactly like the state of Texas, but they’re more like the rest of the state than the other 27 districts.

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’s officeholders.

It’s not just demography. The Texas Legislative Council — 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.

That doesn’t look like Texas, either.

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%.

That’s not representative.

Sometime during the Legislature’s ongoing special session on redistricting, someone will compare the proposed maps to the current maps — 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.

This time, 95% of the state’s growth was attributed to people of color. Ten years ago, the U.S. census attributed 89% of the state’s 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%.

The Legislature that convened in 2011 had the same goals, more or less, that this year’s 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.

They were focused, then as now, on winning, and not on that other word — the one that indicates every Texan is fairly accounted for and has the same political power.

Representation.

Federal government commitment necessary to protect voting rights for historically marginalized people, Fraga testifies

It is incredibly special to hear my friend and colleague, Professor of
Transformative Latino Leadership at the University of Notre Dame, Professor Luis Fraga and his son, Emory University Professor of Political Science Dr.
Bernard Fraga, testify before a House of Representatives Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties hearing.

Thanks to father and son for advocating for everybody's right to vote while critiquing voter discrimination and legislative initiatives that we're seeing in places throughout the country. We all need to reach out to whoever represents us and urge them to pass the For the People Act (HR 1), as well as the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

Thanks to Dr. Daniel Estrada for sharing. Such a proud day for father and son!

-Angela Valenzuela

Aug. 3, 2021

Colleen Sharkey

On July 27, Luis Fraga, the Rev. Donald P. McNeill, C.S.C., Professor of Transformative Latino Leadership at the University of Notre Dame, testified via Zoom at the House of Representatives Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties hearing on “The Need to Enhance the Voting Rights Act: Practice-Based Coverage.”

The hearing took place as Congress is considering amending section 4 of the Voting Rights Act via the John Lewis Voting Rights Act (also known as H.R. 4) that would revive and strengthen parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The John Lewis Voting Rights Act addresses a 2013 Supreme Court decision that eliminated preclearance rules.

“The practice-based preclearance provision isolates those practices that states have historically used to abridge or deny the right to vote, and it does so without singling out any particular jurisdiction or geographic area,” explained witness Franita Tolson of USC’s Gould School of Law. The preclearance provision required states to allow the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to review and approve potentially discriminatory changes to their voting laws.

Congressman Steve Cohen, chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, noted that there is a strong relationship between some voting laws and policies — like consolidating or relocating polling places and changing jurisdictional boundaries — and voting discrimination based on race, color or language-minority status. “Moreover, historical evidence demonstrates that when the percentage of the minority racial or ethnic population of a state or county reaches a certain tipping point, there is an increased likelihood that the jurisdiction will engage in a voting rights violation,” he said. “That is, in areas where there is an emerging minority group that, at some point, grows large enough to threaten the existing, white-dominated power structure of the jurisdiction, the risk is greatly heightened that the white-dominated power structure will respond by trying to suppress the ability of members of the emerging minority group to vote.”

Fraga was asked to participate in the hearing based on his expertise regarding voting rights policy as well as the history of Latino politics. He also provided his report “Vote Dilution and Voter Disenfranchisement in United States History” to the subcommittee. In the report, Fraga chronicles myriad attempts to keep different minority groups from voting beginning with the founding of the country, through the 1975 expansion and renewal of the Voting Rights Act.

“What is learned from the history of the U.S. is that without a clear, strong commitment on the part of the federal government, one cannot depend on state and local jurisdictions to protect the voting rights of racial, ethnic, language minority and other historically marginalized voters,” Fraga said in his opening statement.

Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, echoed Cohen’s sentiments, calling preclearance “the most powerful enforcement tool in our history.” He also noted that the Latino community is growing exponentially and that growth will mean that Latino voters will approach numbers where they could, as Cohen described, threaten the existing, white-dominated power structure in those districts. “Too many will see the growth of the Latino community as a threat,” Saenz said.

John C. Yang, president and executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, said restoring and strengthening the Voting Rights Act (by passing H.R. 4) is a top priority for his organization. He underscored the “othering” of Asian Americans and the increase in anti-Asian violence since the beginning of the pandemic. He gave several examples of both negative attitudes toward Asian Americans and of the hurdles they face when attempting to exercise their right to vote. One example he gave was of a Texas legislator at a state house of representatives hearing in 2009 suggesting that Asian Americans “adopt names that are easier for Americans to deal with in order to avoid difficulties imposed on them by voter identification laws.” With the exponential growth of the Asian American population (23 million as of the 2020 census) and an expanding number of Asian American political candidates, Yang said, there is “an increase in racial appeals against Asian American candidates and efforts to erect barriers to the ballot for Asian American voters.”

“This history of voter suppression and efforts like the implementation of at-large elections have occurred in many different parts of the country — targeted at different groups and at different times,” Fraga said. “It’s very important that there be continued vigilance, because every time that vigilance has been removed, every time that enforcement efforts to protect voting rights have been removed, every single time in the history of our country, there has been an equivalent movement to try to limit the voting rights of particular segments of our population. That vigilance I see as being possible and absolutely necessary when we reconsider the nature of Section 4 (of the Voting Rights Act of 1965).”

Bernard Fraga of Emory University, whose research focuses on quantitative analyses of U.S. elections, highlighted an important difference between counties with significant minority voters and those with fewer minority voters.

“Roughly two-thirds of counties where a minority group makes up more than 20 percent of the voting age population have had at least one voting rights-related lawsuit filed against them since 1982,” Bernard Fraga said. “This is about four times the rate we see in counties with a smaller minority population share.”

Republican witness T. Russell Nobile of Judicial Watch disagrees with Luis and Bernard Fraga, Saenz, Yang and other witnesses, calling the John Lewis Voting Rights Act “a remedy in search of a problem.” He asserted that the Department of Justice’s own data do not back up the argument that without pre-clearance, lawsuits would overwhelm the department. Citing rising numbers of minority voters, he claimed that narratives about voter suppression are false and said some are labeling common-sense election regulations as Jim Crow 2.0 “to enflame passions.” Lawyer Bryan P. Tyson, also a Republican witness, said that H.R. 4 is tantamount to injecting the federal government into extremely local issues.

Luis Fraga drew a parallel from the era just before Jim Crow — when more than half a million African Americans voted and elected a significant number of African Americans to national, state and city offices — to today. In what Fraga labeled as “partisan competition,” a series of procedures were enacted after mass voting by African Americans to make sure the number of minority voters never constituted a majority.

“The parallel that I see (today) is that there is great concern that the small margins that characterize election outcomes can be affected by current voter suppression methods,” Luis Fraga said.

Reviving preclearance and other statutes from the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by way of H.R. 4, Fraga wrote in his report, would “enhance the likelihood that all voters will have an equal chance to vote and to cast a meaningful vote. Only then will one of the most fundamental ideals of American democracy have the chance to be realized.”

Originally published by Colleen Sharkey at news.nd.edu on July 29, 2021.

Prof. Fraga's testimony in the video below.

30:27  --  1st appearance
1:03:31  --  2nd appearance
1:14:04 --  3rd appearance

These Texas republicans' days are numbered and they know it. They legislate like they're backed into a corner, fighting for their lives despite being the party in power. And they still lack a legislative fix to the Texas electrical grid where over a hundred Texans lost their lives in February's winter storm.

Their focus instead was on disenfranchising lower-income, people of color from the ballot box. In the long term, and the short term, as well, this is not sustainable. 

There is no grand, lofty vision here. It's all about survival and protecting their incumbencies, the lowest level of resonance for a polity. 

They're showing their every card and can no longer hide from their self-serving decisions and commitments, even despite their 6am vote when none of us were awake to observe this. 

My friends, it is abundantly clear to me that if political disenfranchisement is their only play, they do not deserve to govern. For the rest of us, let this be the very same ground for radical hope.

To members of Congress, do take notice and pass "For the People Act (HR 1) and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. 

-Angela Valenzuela

In 6 a.m. vote, divided Texas Senate approves GOP elections bill after all-night debate

Chuck Lindell

Austin American-Statesman

May 30, 2021

The Texas Senate, voting along party lines, approved a sweeping Republican elections bill shortly after 6 a.m. Sunday after a lively overnight debate led mostly by Democrats that had begun 7½ hours earlier.

Senate Bill 7, known as the Election Integrity Protection Act, must be approved by the Texas House before midnight Sunday. The bill is eligible for a vote at 4:50 p.m. according to the House calendar.

Democrats criticized the bill's restrictions, particularly a ban on 24-hour voting and drive-thru voting that was popular with nonwhite voters last year in Harris County, for disproportionately affecting people of color.

"I represent a majority African American district, and we benefited from the drive-thru voting that you're trying to ban now. I feel like you're coming for my district," said Sen. Borris Miles, D-Houston, adding that leaders with the FBI, Department of Justice and Texas secretary of state's office acknowledged that the 2020 election was safe, secure and free of widespread fraud.

Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, D-Austin, said SB 7 was an overreaction.

"We've had next to no fraud, and this has been documented at the federal level and the state level. But instead you're rewriting the Election Code," she said.

A look at the bill:GOP unveils final version of Texas elections bill, which includes more restrictions

SB 7 is one of several GOP efforts in statehouses around the country to narrow voting opportunities, particularly in urban counties that tend to vote Democratic, after Republicans echoed former President Donald Trump's claims that last year's presidential election was stolen. No widespread fraud was ever uncovered.

But Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, defended his bill as Saturday became Sunday, and he was still at it as sunrise neared — rejecting claims that the bill targeted nonwhite voters or that it was a solution in search of a problem.

"The provisions apply equally across the state. They are not limited to a particular group or particular area," he said.

A rush to debate

The Senate and House had passed widely different versions of SB 7, leading to a conference committee to work out the differences.

That committee's final version of the bill was filed and distributed to senators at 3:36 p.m. Saturday. Less than three hours later, Hughes stood in the Senate and proposed waiving the rule that requires a 24-hour delay before the bill could be considered by the Senate.

Democrats, who had been huddling in private to discuss their options only a few minutes earlier, objected to the speed of events.

More:After House roadblock, GOP senators revive bill limiting school discussions of race, social issues

"I would ask that we take the time that's necessary to understand the changes, to understand the entirety of this before we are asked to vote on a bill that affects every single voter in Texas," said Sen. Beverly Powell, D-Burleson.

Hughes replied that he planned to give senators a private briefing at 8 p.m., bringing them up to speed on a bill that grew from 23 pages to 67 pages in conference committee — adding that there would be plenty of time to discuss SB 7 in public during what he expected to be a long and vigorous floor debate that would not begin until after 10 p.m. to allow more time to study the legislation.

Sen. Jose Menéndez, D-San Antonio, said the late debate would occur when most Texans would not be watching in person or online.

"How did you decide that 10 p.m. tonight was the right time? Does that seem like the best time to be creating very important policy-making decisions after 10 p.m.?" he said. "Tomorrow we have the full day to debate any legislative measures, do we not?"

But Hughes noted the looming deadline — all conference committee reports must get a vote by midnight Sunday — and Republicans voted as a bloc to waive the 24-hour delay.

The Senate returned to SB 7 shortly after 10:30 p.m. by taking up a resolution giving the conference committee permission to include provisions that had not been part of the bills passed by the House and Senate.

Hughes, who was co-chairman of the conference committee, said many of the sections added to SB 7 were taken from other GOP election bills that had passed the Senate or were considered in committee, while other ideas cropped up during negotiations with his co-chairman, Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park.

Sen. Nathan Johnson, D-Dallas, called the resolution an affront to the legislative process.

"This seems more like you’re trying to get in bills that you couldn’t pass, or you thought of some other way to do some things that many of the members of this chamber don’t want you to do," Johnson said.

After the Republican majority voted to approve Senate Resolution 547, senators began debating SB 7 at 12:30 a.m. Sunday.

A pattern of late nights

Partisan disagreements have pushed lawmakers into several late-night and early-morning sessions in the past several weeks as Republicans pressed an aggressively conservative agenda this session.

A rancorous debate over SB 7 pushed the Texas House beyond 3 a.m. on May 7, setting the stag for this weekend's showdown.

And a fight over House Bill 3979 found the Senate voting at 2 a.m. on May 22 over legislation to limit how public school teachers handle discussions of race and racism in the classroom.

The Senate made wholesale changes on the floor, putting the bill in danger when House Democrats successfully argued that several amendments violated House rules.

With no time to fix the bill by traditional means, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick allowed Hughes to make a motion to recede, a little-known parliamentary maneuver that stripped the bill of all Senate changes and passed HB 3979 in its original House form on a party-line vote.

Democratic objections that the Texas Constitution did not allow bills to be passed that late in the session were overruled. 

The session ends on Monday, with lawmakers still not having agreed upon priority legislation, including fixing the Texas electrical grid after millions of Texans were plunged into cold and darkness during the deadly February winter storms.

Voting groups fear Texas about to exceed Georgia's limits by Stef. W. Kigh | Axios

It's been that kind of legislative session. We must get Congress to vote on the "For the People Act (HR 1) and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Why? This piece in Roll Call says why: 

Why Congress must pass HR 1 and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act:Republican state legislators nationwide are already moving fast to restrict our freedom to vote

This should be a priority for the federal government.

-Angela Valenzuela

Voting groups fear Texas about to exceed Georgia's limits

Stef W. Kight

Voters in El Paso, Texas, wait to cast their ballots in the 2018 race between Beto O'Rourke and Sen. Ted Cruz. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Local advocacy groups, big business and former presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke are fighting a pair of Texas voting bills they brand as suppressive, each of which could pass the Republican-controlled legislature as soon as next week.

Why it matters: Advocates say Texas' pending changes are worse than those that recently caused an uproar and boycotts in Georgia. The fight comes as the Texas population is rapidly growing and diversifying — and turning more Democratic.

• "So much of what we learned about Georgia, we learned after it was too late," O'Rourke told Axios. "In Texas, if there's anything positive about the situation, it's that we could still win this."

Driving the news: Republicans have the political muscle to pass the provisions whenever they want. "Hands down something is going to get passed," Chris Hollins, a former Harris County clerk who opposes the bills, told Axios.

• Democrats and groups like Texas Freedom Network and the ACLU are ramping up the pressure. After seeing the outrage from big business over the Georgia bill, groups are trying to get major companies to speak out and force Republicans to back off.
• Texas is already considered to be one of the most restrictive voting states. It saw the highest voter turnout in 30 years in 2020 but came in 44th of the 50 states for turnout rate, according to data from Elect Project.

What to watch: American Airlines and Dell Technologies have already come out against the bills.

• Advocates have been pressuring other Texas-based companies to get on board, and they expect to see more speak out in the coming days.

Details: The bills in the Texas Senate and House would end 24-hour and drive-thru voting — options that were disproportionately used by voters of color last year, according to the Texas Civil Rights Project.

• They also would add criminal penalties for election officials who send out applications to vote by mail to voters who had not requested them and would provide more access for partisan poll watchers.
• The changes would especially impact more progressive Texas cities, the New York Times reported.
• The sweeping legislation has been pushed by Texas House Elections Committee Chairman Briscoe Cain — who drove to Pennsylvania to help the Trump campaign fight the 2020 election results.

The state of play: The House bill — HB-6 — is already out of committee and could make it to the floor as soon as next week.

• The Senate bill — SB7 — was passed at the start of this month. It is now expected to be voted on in committee in the House as soon as Thursday evening after Cain brought it up at the last minute, Charlie Bonner, communications director for the nonpartisan advocacy group MOVE Texas, told Axios.
• Republicans also have a flurry of duplicative, piecemeal bills ready to roll if the bigger packages fail.

The other side: Texas Republicans have pushed the legislation, saying that it will normalize voting across the state.

• In response to American Airlines' opposition to the Senate bill, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick released a statement, saying, "The majority of Texas supports maintaining the integrity of our elections. ... Senate Bill 7 includes comprehensive reforms that will ensure voting in Texas is consistent statewide and secure."
• Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, said in a statement: “Texas is protecting the number of early voting days, which is longer than allowed in states like New York and Delaware. And, we are extending hours for early voting."
• "Also, Texas ensures that voting by mail is protected from fraud, which is important."

Sen. Ossoff: 'We May Need To Revise The Senate Rules In Order To Govern'

The two Georgia Senators John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are a powerful team, as Lawrence O'Donnell states. I shudder to think of what would have happened had they not won their elections. Among other things, as we all know, President Biden's $1.9 Trillion Pandemic Relief Bill would not have happened. 

Major lesson? Voting matters without which democracy is in peril. Now, we must pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act to preserve and extend access to the vote for all Americans to the ballot box.

-Angela Valenzuela

#ProtectTheVote #VotingMatters #VotingRightsAct

He suggests a way to recast the notion of partisanship ..overwhelming bipartisan support.