Official RPT Redistricting Update XI: It Is All Up To The Courts: June 26th Primary Election POSSIBLE

The following message is an official Texas Redistricting/Primary Election update from the Republican Party of Texas:

Redistricting Update XI: It Is All Up To The Courts

The fate of the redistricting maps now rests solely with the three-judge panel in San Antonio. As of the time of this update, a global agreement between all parties has not been reached relative to the Texas House and Texas Congressional districts. Therefore, the final decisions as to where the lines will be are in the hands of the three-judge panel. The panel set deadlines for parties to submit final briefs on various issues and that deadline has now passed. This now means that all the arguments are over and all we are waiting for now is for the Court to rule.

If the Court issues maps on or before March 3rd, then the May 29th primary date can be accomplished - assuming a re-opened filing period can be accomplished within a few days. If the Court issues new maps after March 3rd, then the next and final available primary date would be June 26th. To accomplish a June 26th primary, maps would still need to be issued by March 30th to meet the June 26th date.

IMPORTANT TX Redistricting Update: NO April Election. One May 29th Primary or Split April/May Elections

The San Antonio Federal Court had a Texas Redistricting hearing yesterday, 2/14/12. We had hoped for more clarity of when we will get to vote. After the hearing, things did not look so good…. Instead of clarity, we got chaos. A Unified April Election is OUT (won’t happen) and we still do not know when we will vote! We might even be forced to have our Precinct, County and State Conventions BEFORE we even have the primary election!

Remember last week the Court said they wanted a unified April Primary? I am not so gullible to believe every word that this liberal leaning court says and so for the past couple of months I have been adamant that the courts and the Democrats will keep pushing things back and we will either have a unified May primary or a split primary. Guess what, the court changed their mind yesterday about wanting to have a Unified April Primary (is anyone surprised?) and now there will be NO Unified April Primary! There is just no time.

Now it looks like we will have one unified Primary Election on May 29th or June 26th, OR we will have a split Primary (two elections) with the Presidential and Statewide elections in late April and all the other elections in May/June (or whenever the redistricting battle is settled).

Both the Democrats and the Republicans are OK with a split election now that there is no time for a unified April Primary, if there was a way for it to be funded. A split election would cost more money than one election, so unless the state comes up with the money, Texas will not have a split primary and instead we will have one unified Primary Election on May 29^th or even as late as June 26^th.

After the conclusion of the hearing today 2/15/12 (or whenever the court feels like it because we are apparently their puppets right now), the court will tell us whether or not we will have a split election or one unified election pushed back to May/June.

We are going to have some major problems if we do not have a split election and instead have one unified election in May/June. We have to have Precinct, County and a State Convention. This is required and we CANNOT move the date of our June 7^th Republican State Convention. The Precinct Conventions, by Law, are on the Primary Election Day. If the court dictates that Texas will have one unified Primary election in May or June, then it will be impossible to have our conventions on Primary election day. We will have to beg the court/judges/dictators/kings for Judicial Relief to allow us to have our Precinct and County Conventions BEFORE the Primary Election Day and NOT tied to the Primary Election in any way.

So that is basically what is going on. WHAT A MESS! How much longer will we just sit here on the sidelines waiting on the court instead of being more proactive and pulling everything out of our sleeves in order to fight the unconstitutional actions that are being taken against us?

Sincerely,

David Bellow

State Republican Executive Committee

Official Statement from the Republican Party of Texas

The Republican Party of Texas issued a statement about all the new developments after yesterday’s Redistricting Hearing in San Antonio. This statement is as follows:

Redistricting Update IX: Valentine's Day Hearing Update

Today in San Antonio, the three-judge panel began a full day of hearing final arguments in the Texas redistricting case, which affects the scheduling of the state primary and state convention. We can report that the Court appears to be backing off of its stated intention to have a unified April Primary Election. This comes after assorted county election officials stepped forward to testify that it would be impossible to hold a unified April Primary Election - even if they had maps today.

Although the Republican Party of Texas had Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart appear before the panel to testify that an April 24th primary election is still doable, our sense is the Court now believes that April is no longer viable for a single unified primary. From the Court's questioning, it seemed that at least one judge and possibly two would prefer to go ahead with a Presidential primary and statewide races in April and the other races at a date to be determined in the future. How the extra primary election would be funded appears problematic at this time. We won't know until the Court rules whether these conclusions are correct. Our best estimate right now is that there will be a single unified primary on May 29th, absent the state coming up with funds for a split primary.

Because the Texas Democratic Party's lawyers backed up Chairman Munisteri's testimony at the hearing that it is practically not possible to move the State Conventions at this late date, one thing we know for sure (and the Court is aware of this fact), is that you can't schedule the primary after the State Conventions unless (as the Democratic lawyer stated) the State Parties can find a field somewhere to hold their conventions and if we could guarantee good weather.

Chairman Munisteri testified to the Court that it would be impossible to select delegates in accordance with the process prescribed in the Election Code, if the primary was not held until May 29th and the state convention began on June 7th. However, the Court signaled that it would be open to judicial relief to allow the State Parties to select their delegates in a way that didn't require precinct conventions to be tied to the primary. The Texas Democratic Party lawyer went a step further and argued that even though the Election Code prescribes the process, that it is their position that the Election Code is unenforceable because the political parties are private organizations and thus they could change their rules without a court order. The RPT believes it would be risky to do so and prefers the route of obtaining judicial permission prior to such action. In the event the Court schedules a May primary, Chairman Munisteri plans to schedule an emergency teleconference with all SREC members and Republican County Chairs to discuss alternative processes for picking State Convention delegates, in the hopes of coming to a consensus as to what to suggest to the court for relief.

The court also heard presentations from several plaintiffs and the State of Texas as to their position relative to how maps should be drawn. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court directed the three-judge panel to issue new maps that were neither the legislative-drawn lines, nor the subsequent lines issued by the San Antonio three-judge panel in November. In issuing that directive, the Supreme Court set forth the criteria by which lines could be altered. Specifically, the Supreme Court said that if the San Antonio panel found there was a "not insubstantial" chance of violation of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, that lines could be altered to comply with Section 5. A Washington, D.C. three-judge federal panel has had a trial on Section 5 so as to make a final determination as to violations, but the Supreme Court indicated that the San Antonio three-judge federal panel should issue interim maps which correct any deficiencies in districts in which the "not insubstantial" standard was met. Moreover, the San Antonio three-judge panel has jurisdiction over Section 2 violations of the Voting Rights Act and the Supreme Court indicated that if there were violations of this provision, that lines could be altered as well.

In recent orders, the San Antonio three-judge panel had directed the plaintiffs and the State of Texas (representing the legislative maps) to see if they could agree which districts fell under these criteria and suggest fixes. Last week, the Attorney General put forth a proposed set of maps which addressed potentially problematic districts while at the same time, tried to stay as close to the original legislative maps as possible. Some of the plaintiffs' groups agreed to some of the proposed lines. The hearing today flushed out the differences, with each party stating their differences and arguments thereof. The Attorney General's proposals put forth what it believes are 50 Texas State House districts which have an opportunity for minorities to elect their candidates of choice - a number which meets the benchmark (2010) plan's number of 50 such districts. Some of the plaintiffs' groups however, want 51 or more of these districts, and a much larger number of "coalition" districts, which would likely elect Democrats, but would not have a majority of their citizen voting age population be comprised of a single minority group. Another group of plaintiffs which opposes the suggested lines put forth by the Attorney General, was arguing for 67 majority-minority districts in the State House. In effect, their proposed maps would substantially reduce the number of Republican legislators.

The Latino Redistricting Task Force, which represents a number of the Latino groups, has indicated that they would not object to much of the proposed map, but they disagree over House District 144 (currently represented by Representative Ken Legler). The Attorney General's map draws that district with 48% registered voters with Spanish surnames. The Latino Redistricting Task Force would not accept any lines for HD 144 that do not have at least 50% of registration of Spanish surnames. That particular plaintiffs' group was also willing to accept the proposed Congressional maps which would split the four new Congressional districts into lines which would result in two new Republican districts - an improvement over the three-judge panel's maps but which is down one from the maps originally drawn by the Legislature. Many of the other plaintiffs' groups opposed the proposed Congressional map and wanted at least one more Democratic Congressional district in addition to the two new Democratic districts contained in the Attorney General's map. Congressman Joe Barton has intervened, and is arguing for one more Republican district.

The State Senate map has really only one district in dispute - that being Senate District 10, the district held by State Senator Wendy Davis. Apparently the Attorney General and the plaintiff Democrats are not that far apart in respect to their proposals. Under virtually every anticipated scenario, at the very least that senate district would be winnable by a Republican candidate. The final battle over the lines will determine whether it is a toss-up district, or one where the Republicans will have a slight advantage.

To complicate things further, the Department of Justice sent a lawyer who argued that there were five Texas House districts on the previously-drawn legislative map, which the Department of Justice is insisting be changed because of violations to the Voting Rights Act. The DOJ lawyer also stated emphatically that the federal court panel has limited authority to alter deadlines that were controlled by federal statute.

At this time, it seems more likely than not, that all the parties will not come to an agreement on the Congressional and Texas House maps. Therefore, we are assuming that once the hearing is concluded tomorrow (Wednesday, Feb. 15) that the final map lines will be decided by the three-judge panel as opposed to the parties in the lawsuit. To add another wrinkle, one of the judges suggested that if the primary will have to be delayed until May anyway - that the San Antonio three-judge panel may delay their decision for at least a while to see if they get a ruling out of the Washington D.C. three-judge panel regarding potential Section 5 violations so that they can incorporate the decision into their deliberations.

After attending in full and testifying at the hearing, Chairman Munisteri issued the following statement - "It is the Republican Party of Texas' position that a single unified primary is still possible for April. If the Court delays the primary further, it will be a great disappointment to Republicans who wish to have early participation in the Presidential primary process. I would like to applaud the work of General Abbott's Deputy Attorney General for Defense Litigation, David Mattax, who I thought did an excellent job refuting the Democrats' contention that Republicans intentionally discriminated against minorities, as well as providing excellent rebuttal district by district to the plaintiffs' attorneys contention that more districts needed to have their lines altered with the intent of creating additional Democratic districts."

The hearing will continue tomorrow, but is expected to conclude by 2:30pm. We should know tomorrow for certain, whether we have a split primary or a unified primary. We should also know whether April is definitely out. We hopefully will have some guidance as to what flexibility the parties will have in altering the delegate selection process. We will provide a further report after tomorrow's hearing.

Advisory to all Republican county chairmen, precinct chairmen, and party activists - In the event that the primary is pushed back further, the RPT will still seek court relief to allow district conventions to go forward on the dates you already have scheduled but with the different delegate selection process. Consequently, at this time - we urge you not to cancel your district conventions as they still may occur on the same day. We anticipate having a conference call with the SREC in the next week to discuss the situation and examine options together. Thank you for your understanding and patience in this difficult situation.

One 2012 Texas Primary Election in May Instead of Two (March and May) Would Devastate TX Presidential Vote

I previously wrote an article stating that the Texas Primary Elections will likely be split with one in March and the other in May. This is what the Texas Republican Party and the AG argued for.

Not everyone likes that idea though and there are many who want only one Primary election date, including both Democrats and A good number of Republican State Senators and Texas Congressmen.

We will find out soon from the San Antonio Federal Court whether we will have two Texas Primaries (one in March and One in May) of whether ALL the Primary Elections in Texas will be pushed back to a later day, likely May.

Having only one primary election instead of two would certainly push back the Texas Primary election till at least May.

I certainly understand some of the reasons for not wanting to have a split Primary, including the extra costs and confusion. I also completely respect the opinions of the State Senators and Congressmen who are for just one later primary date. I do have concerns that this later primary election will devastate the Texas Vote in the Presidential Primary Election.

A Later Primary Would Give Texas No Say in the Republican Presidential Primary Race

A HUGE drawback of pushing back all the primary Elections in Texas would be that it would hurt the ability of Texas to choose the next Republican Presidential Candidate in what would be the biggest election against the Democrats in the History of America.

Right now, Texas is in position to have a major say in the Republican Presidential Primary election. A later primary Election would give Texas nearly no chance of having a major impact on who the Republican Presidential Candidate will be.

The RNC made a rule that if certain states had their primary Elections before March 2012 and February 2012, then those state would lose HALF of their Presidential Primary Delegates. Well, most of the states that have primary elections before Texas have not complied with this rule and therefore those States will lose half of their Republican Presidential Primary Election Delegate Votes.

A Candidate needs 1214 Delegates in order to have a majority of the Republican Presidential Primary Delegates and win the Republican Nomination.

As is stands, at the end of February 2012, and going into the March Texas Primary Election, there will only have been 87 Delegates Republican Presidential Delegates Selected (after the penalties)

Texas Has 155 Presidential Primary Delegates!

With 155 Delegates, A Texas Presidential Primary Election in March could COMPLETELY alter the Republican Presidential Race with Texas getting to pick the leader

On the other hand, a Presidential Primary Election in May would give Texas very little say in the Republican Presidential Race because many more delegates will have been selected and the media will likely have already decided who the leader is by that point in time.

We will find out soon from the San Antonio Federal Judges whether we will have two Texas Primaries (one in March and One in May) of whether ALL the Primary Elections in Texas will be pushed back to a later day, likely May.

Texas Primary Elections Likely to be in March & May After Supreme Court Stops Unconstitutional Court Drawn Redistricting Maps

Update: Federal Court has Ordered the Texas Republican Primary election to be on just one date on April 3rd, 2012. Click Here to read more

Also, at the bottom of this article you can read an Excellent, In-Depth Explanation of the Supreme Court Stay emailed to me from State Senator Robert Nichols

The US Supreme Court has granted a stay requested by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and Governor Rick Perry along with other state officials. The stay blocks Texas from using the maps drawn by the lower Federal Court in San Antonio, TX. This Federal Court re-drew the maps for Texas in response to race based lawsuits from Liberal Democrat groups who cannot get the people to vote for them so they try to get into office via Activist Judges.

This Stay is GREAT news for Texas. The Constitution of the United States should just be thrown in the trash if 2 judges in San Antonio are able to draw the voting maps for the entire State of Texas. The United States Constitution says that the ELECTED Representatives in the State Legislature of Texas are the people who are supposed to draw the new voting maps. The court drawn maps represented the greatest attack against Texas and The Constitution since, well, since I can ever remember. Two unelected judges should not and cannot draw the maps for Texas. That is NOT their job nor do they have the authority to do it. The Supreme Court has taken the extraordinary step of granting a Stay to stop the court drawn maps. This shows that the Supreme Court believes there are serious problems with what is going on.

These court drawn maps not only went against the Constitution and the Sovereignty of Texas, but they also were illegal in many ways. The lines in the court drawn maps irresponsibly cut through communities and discriminatorily used race as the sole basis of where the lines were drawn. The court drawn maps created districts that had significant differences in population therefore creating districts where one person’s vote in one district was stronger than one person’s vote in another district.

So What Does This Mean for Texas Elections?

Texas Will Likely Have TWO Primary Elections in 2012. One in March and One in May

It is not official that Texas will have two primary elections in 2012, but I am positive that this will happen. The Court Drawn Maps being fought in court only involve the Texas Congressional, State Senate, and State Representative maps. The Supreme Court will not be hearing arguments on these Redistricting Maps until January 9th, 2012. This makes it impossible for these three Primary Races to be held in March. The Congressional, State Rep, and State Senate Primary Elections will likely be pushed back until May so that those maps can be figured out in a Supreme Court Battle. The most likely date in May will be May 22nd 2012. May 22nd is already scheduled as the Texas Primary Election Runoff date so the State is already prepared to do a Primary Election on that date. It is a couple weeks after the Texas Local Elections in May so the Local elections will get a boost in publicity, but there will not be a shortage of voting machines because of the 2 week difference in these May Elections
All the other Primary Elections will still be able to be held in March. This includes all the other Primary races like the Presidential Primary election, US Senate, state wide positions like Railroad Commissioner, State Board of Education, and the County level Primary Elections.

All Candidates running for Congress, State Representative and State Senate should just hold tight and wait until the Supreme Court makes a ruling because we will not know how these districts will look yet. All voters should also hold tight because you do not know what district you will be in until after this is resolved.

All other Primary races are still a GO for March so let’s all not lose focus on the March elections because there are very important races like President and US Senate. You know, having two primary election dates this year might be a good thing. There are so many important political races that it is hard to know who is running for what. Splitting up the races into two different elections might be better than having just one big overwhelming ballot. Plus, the local races in the May election will see possibly the biggest turnout in all of history because of the addition of the Congressional, State Rep, and State Senate Primary Elections so close to the local elections. So if you think you will be able to just fly under the radar running for School Board in May or trying to pass a tax increasing bond in May, think again! The typically low turnout May election will have a HUGE turnout and these local elections will see a record number of voters and will garner more publicity and community interest because of the primary elections that will also be in May.

In a statement sent in to me by e-mail, State Senator Robert Nichols gives an in-depth explanation of a Supreme Court Stay (Nichols said he did not write this but he did send it to me and it is unknown who wrote it):

Texas election maps blocked, for now...

The Supreme Court, working late on a Friday, agreed to rule on the constitutionality of three redistricting plans for the two houses of the Texas legislature and its 36-member U.S. House of Representatives delegation, and put on hold temporarily a U.S. District Court’s interim maps. The Court ordered expedited briefing, and set a hearing on the cases forJan. 9 at 1 p.m. The Justices’ action gave Texas much of what its lawyers had sought in their challenge to the three-judge trial court’s temporary maps, which were to be used for the 2012 election cycle. The Court’s order is here. It raises the strong possibility of a major new ruling on the power of federal judges to draw up redistricting plans while a state legislature’s own maps are under challenge in court.

Although the state had initially sought only a stay of the temporary redistricting plans, it suggested as an alternative that the Court take on the cases itself, and issue a prompt ruling. That is what the Justices agreed to do, putting the cases on its docket for review as 11-713 (the Texas state house case), 11-714 (the Texas state senate case), and 11-715 (the congressional delegation case). What the Court did not do was order any immediate change in the way Texas candidates go about signing up to run in the 2012 primary, now set forMarch 6. Cases 11-713 and 11-715 go by the same title, Perry, et al., v. Perez, et al., and case 11-714 is titled Perry, et al., v. Davis, et al.

Candidates began filing for seats in the legislature and in the House of Representatives on Nov. 28, and the filing period now in effect was to continue until Dec. 15. Friday’s order made no immediate change in that. It was unclear whether the filing period is now to be interrupted until after the cases are decided, and, if not, what districts would actually be used for purposes of candidates’ filing in the meantime. The three maps drawn by the state legislature earlier this year supposedly cannot be used, because their validity under federal voting rights law and the Constitution is now under review by a different U.S. District Court, in Washington. And the interim districts crafted by the District Court in San Antonio cannot be used because they are now stayed by the Justices’ order.

The Court set this briefing schedule: it consolidated the cases, ordered Texas officials and the challengers to the legislature’s maps to file opening briefs simultaneously on Dec. 21. Reply briefs from both sides are due Jan. 3. The oral argument on Jan. 9 will be for one hour only.

Stay applications such as the ones that put these cases before the Court are usually only for temporary remedies, and, most often, seek simply to maintain the status quo while the underlying decision at issue is reviewed. The Court, this time, converted the applications into what it calls “jurisdictional statements,” which is the label it uses for cases that are appealed directly to the Justices from a three-judge District Court. Federal law provides that challenges to redistricting cases are to be heard initially by three-judge District Courts, with direct appeals to the Supreme Court, bypassing the usual transit through a federal Circuit Court of Appeals.

By granting review, the Court, of course, gave no indication of how it would rule on the constitutionality of the District Court’s interim plans. But the Court appeared to have taken seriously and heard perhaps somewhat sympathetically the Texas lawyers’ argument that a 1982 Supreme Court precedent — Upham, et al., v. Seamon, et al. — strictly limits the power of a federal court to craft its own interim redistricting plan that deviates greatly from one drafted by a state legislature. In the San Antonio District Court, the dissenting judge in the 2-1 rulings at issue had argued that the Upham decision barred a court-ordered map that strayed so far from what the state legislature had drawn.

Because the three cases reached the Justices as stay applications, they did not spell out specifically the legal or constitutional questions being laid before the Court. But it does appear, at least at this stage, that the Court will only be ruling on the validity of the San Antonio court’s decision to draw up interim maps of its own. No lower court has yet ruled on the underlying question of whether any of the districts — for the legislature or for the House delegation — actually violate federal law or the Constitution.

Because the issue of federal courts’ power to craft interim redistricting plans usually arises only after each ten-year federal Census, there are not a great many precedents on how wide that judicial authority reaches. The state said in one of its applications that the drafting of a court’s interim plan may occur only infrequently, but “even once in a decade is too frequent for states to sacrifice their sovereignty in this way or for courts to be put in the untenable position of drawing political lines from scratch.”

While Friday’s order seems to put a hold on further proceedings in the San Antonio court’s review of the Texas legislature’s three maps, there was nothing in the order that would appear to have any effect on the continuing review of the validity of those plans by the District Court sitting in Washington. The Justice Department is taking part in the Washington case, and is making significant challenges there to the maps the legislature drew for the Texas house and for the House of Representatives delegations. Those maps, as well as the one for the Texas state senate, are also under broad challenge by minority and civil rights groups.