February 13, 2012 9:30 PM

IS IT A MINORITY COALITION DISTRICT? AG SAYS INTENT TELLS THE TALE

Abbott walks tight rope in negotiating within Supreme Court guidelines

One of the constants in the AG’s legal arguments throughout the challenges to the state’s enacted legislative and congressional maps has been this: the Voting Rights Act does not require the creation or protection of minority coalition districts.

Those are districts that need minority groups to vote together in order to select a candidate of choice.

So it was a little puzzling to see the AG last week announce a proposed interim congressional map that included a newly configured district in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex that appeared to function as a coalition district.

CD 33, under Abbott’s proposal, is a barbell district with population concentrations in Tarrant and Dallas Counties, linked by a strand of land paralleling I-30. It looks similar to a congressional district proposed by MALDEF during session and QR readers will remember that MALDEF was one of the plaintiff groups that said it could live with Abbott’s maps.

But when you compare the two districts, it’s quickly apparent that they are not similar in one key metric. The proportion of Hispanics who are both old enough to vote and citizens differ markedly. The MALDEF proposal called for a district with 50.4 percent Hispanics eligible to vote on age and citizenship status. Abbott’s CD 33 envisions a district with 39.4 percent of the district similarly situated – a difference of 11 points.

In other words, Hispanics, in the CD 33 drawn under the Abbott map, can’t elect their candidate of choice without help from another group. So that would seem to make it a minority coalition district.

By John Reynolds