Texans: who moved my cheese [district]?
The New York Times reports: Once upon a time, Congressional district lines were redrawn once a decade, after each federal census. But last month the Supreme Court made it clear that redistricting could occur far more often, and the resulting sense of impermanence was on display this week in a weather-beaten house on this city's Hispanic, working-class South Side.
A few dozen people clustered around the color-coded maps pinned to the wall, each map showing the jigsaw patterns of how South and West Texas’ Congressional districts might be redrawn in the next few weeks. One keeps this part of southern Bexar County in the 28th Congressional District, another puts it in the 23rd, some split it into both and one plan divides the neighborhood among three districts.
“It’s a mess,” said Jimmie Casias, a military veteran and school board official from nearby Somerset. “And what’s worst about it, the way things are now, if whoever’s running things doesn’t like the way an election turns out, they can come back and change the lines all over again.”
The Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 ruling said that a 2003 redistricting plan, spearheaded by Tom DeLay, the former leader of the Republican majority in the House, was not an unconstitutional gerrymander even though it resulted in the defeat of four Democratic incumbents. But the court also ruled that one district, the 23rd, stretching for 700 miles from Laredo to the outskirts of El Paso was illegal under the Voting Rights Act and needed 100,000 more Hispanics in it to comply. -- Ruling Has Texans Puzzling Over Districts - New York Times