Plaintiff Witness: Texas District Map Hurts Minority Voters
Friday, December 12, 2003
AUSTIN, Texas — The state's GOP-proposed congressional redistricting map (search) would divide a black community in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to such an extent those voters could not elect their candidate of choice, a history professor testified in federal court.
Democratic U.S. Reps. Chet Edwards of Waco and Max Sandlin of Marshall also testified Friday that minority communities in their districts also would be split up under the plan approved by the Republican-dominated Legislature in October.
In the Dallas-Fort Worth area, about 148,000 blacks now represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Martin Frost would be put in five separate districts under the plan, said Allan Lichtman, an American University history professor who researched the proposed map. The black population in that district is the state's third largest.
"They have been put in a district where they have no realistic prospects of electing the candidate of their choice," Lichtman testified Thursday before a federal three-judge panel hearing lawsuits that challenge the redistricting map.
Plaintiffs in the case argue that the map's dilution of minority voting power violates the federal Voting Rights Act (search), rendering the GOP plan to put more Republicans in Congress illegal.
Andy Taylor, an attorney for the state, contended that a new district in South Texas would replace Frost's district as a majority minority district in which the minority population could elect a candidate of choice.
Lichtman said that district, which stretches from the Mexico border north to Austin, could be tough for a Hispanic to win.
Legislators approved the redistricting map during a special session after partisan fighting all year and two boycotts in which Democrats fled the state.
In addition to the federal court hearing the lawsuits, the U.S. Justice Department is reviewing whether the map violates the Voting Rights Act.
If the map stands, it would be used in the state primary March 9. |
