Politicians across the state are announcing their candidacies and hiring campaign workers, but the battle over redistricting again could delay the March primaries and make life difficult for incumbents. Lawyers working for Attorney General Greg Abbott and minority groups filed briefs with a San Antonio federal court that hint at a knockdown, drag-out fight over the state’s political maps and election laws. The fight has intensified since U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has said he wants Texas to submit all proposed election law changes for federal approval before implementing them. Minority groups first filed their lawsuit against Texas’ new political maps May 9, 2011, when the Legislature created them following the 2010 census. Because the case was underway, three federal judges in San Antonio drew temporary legislative and congressional maps for the state to use for the 2012 elections. Abbott didn’t like those maps, so he appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed with him that the maps went too far, absent a verdict in the case. The protracted legal wrangling delayed the 2012 primary from March 6 to May 29.
Now after a landmark Supreme Court decision and another legislative session, the fight still is on in San Antonio. The Legislature has tried to end the lawsuit by throwing out the 2011 maps that a Washington, D.C., court declared intentionally discriminatory and replacing them with the 2012 maps drawn by the San Antonio judges.
Minority groups say that’s not good enough because those maps include many of the same discriminatory elements drawn by the Legislature in 2011. They want the judges to draw new maps from scratch and require Texas to submit any other changes to election law for court or Justice Department review.
Abbott opposes all of this and wants the case dropped.
In court papers, he signaled that he’s ready to go to the Supreme Court if he doesn’t get his way.
“A judicially imposed pre-clearance requirement is no less extraordinary and no less constitutionally suspect,” Abbott wrote.
Full Article: Texas primaries could be delayed again over redistricting » Standard-Times.
