Tarrant residents call for end to gerrymandering when Texas lawmakers redraw districts
Tarrant County Commissioner Devan Allen asked state lawmakers Wednesday to create a new path when they redraw political boundaries next year.
Past efforts, she said, led to maps that “stripped away basic rights” from some Texans.
“I ask that your actions be guided not by the need to maintain political influence,” she told the House Redistricting Committee that met at the Tarrant County College Southeast Campus in Arlington.
“We have an amazing opportunity to learn from the past and allow it to positively influence our future.”
Allen was among the dozens of people — many who echoed the call for an end to political gerrymandering, where lawmakers draw maps to benefit one party — who showed up to talk about redistricting.
By law, state lawmakers must redraw boundaries for U.S. House and Texas House and Senate legislative districts every 10 years, based on new Census figures. The goal is to make sure all the districts are about the same size and maintain or boost minority percentages.
Texas lawmakers will redraw maps in 2021. But they won’t get updated 2020 Census data until the 2021 legislative session is well underway, so they are trying to get out in front of the issue now.
“There’s a lot at stake in next year’s redistricting process,” said state Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie.
The redistricting committee is traveling across the state, holding public hearings such as the one Wednesday in Arlington, to learn what residents would like to see done — or changed — on the new maps.
The committee also held a hearing in Fort Worth last year.
‘Difficult process’
Some Arlington officials requested that urban communities stay together and rural communities stay together in the new maps.
They also stressed the importance of getting accurate census counts to make sure local residents have the representation they are due.
Last year, state lawmakers had to amend boundary lines around House District 90, represented by Rep. Ramon Romero, D-Fort Worth. The district had been cited for deliberate discrimination, due to the lines lawmakers redrew in 2013. Judges said race was wrongly used as a key factor.
State Rep. Phil King, the Weatherford Republican who heads the Redistricting Committee, said the process of drawing maps can be challenging, trying to balance all the needs and desires.
“It’s a very difficult process,” he said. “But we are going to try to make this the most transparent redistricting process in the history of Texas.”
As the number of residents in Texas continues to grow, the state can pick up as many as three new congressional seats, projections show.
The state has already gained more than 3.8 million new residents since 2010, state data shows.
And estimates show that In Tarrant County, the population is projected to grow from 1.8 million in 2010 to 2.1 million in 2020.
Taking time
Democrat Pam Durham, a Fort Worth precinct chairwoman, stressed that all communities have distinct personalities.
But some are split down the middle — in some cases divided by a street — and put into different districts.
She asked lawmakers to take “the utmost of concern” in following the Voting Rights Act and consider a special session next summer to have more time to redraw districts with care.
“We the people of Texas deserve no less,” she said.
King said a special session isn’t really an option.
First, he noted, Gov. Greg Abbott is the only one who can call a special session.
And he added that if the Legislature doesn’t draw redistricting maps during the regular session, then members lose the right to draw them — and that responsibility falls to a specially designated panel.
