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Outside CD-35
Inside CD-35
Hispanic population
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Travel across this gerrymandered Texas district

Texas Republicans faced a challenge as they considered how to redraw the state’s political lines following the 2010 U.S. Census: How could they expand their majorities in the state Legislature and Congress when demographics were shifting against them?

Texas was getting four new seats in Congress because the state’s population had soared, but Hispanic and black residents — who tend to vote for Democrats — accounted for 79 percent of that growth. Yet lawmakers managed to redraw electoral maps in 2011 to add more Republican-friendly districts, particularly in Congress, where Republicans gained three surefire districts and Democrats notched just one.

This is the 36-district congressional map the Legislature approved in 2011.

Federal judges have since ruled that several congressional districts were illegally drawn along racial lines. The judges said lawmakers drew the map to minimize the political clout of Hispanic and black voters in part by drawing boundaries that “packed” and “cracked” minority voting blocs. And in mid-August, they voided two districts from the court-tweaked map that lawmakers enacted in 2013.

A key piece of Republicans’ redistricting strategy was the curiously shaped Congressional District 35.

U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat, currently holds the seat, which he won after lawmakers in 2011 broke up his old district. It’s one of the districts the federal judges invalidated last week. Let’s take a closer look at how it was created, according to court rulings and testimony in the ongoing redistricting lawsuit.

The north end of the district starts in Austin — an area Doggett has represented since 1995.

In light of the state’s booming minority population, mapdrawers acknowledged needing to add one “Hispanic opportunity district.” Trying to protect Republican majorities elsewhere, they labeled heavily-Democratic CD-35 an “opportunity district” and bumped up its share of Hispanic voters to 50 percent. Judges would call this a “facade” opportunity district that reduced Hispanic voting power statewide.

Here’s a look at how mapmakers relied on geographic and racial data in drawing CD-35.

This map shows the percentage of Hispanics in each census block. The darker the blue, the higher the share of Hispanics in that block. Hired mapdrawers said they packed CD-35 with Hispanics of voting age, enough to reach a 50 percent threshold that made the district look like an “opportunity” for such voters.

Under traditional redistricting principles, mapmakers are supposed to avoid carving up neighborhoods, racial blocs or other “communities of interest” as much as possible.

Across CD-35, however, mapdrawers split voting precincts along racial lines to increase the share of Hispanic voters. In South Austin, they split up a voting precinct around St. Edward’s University, with student housing inside the district but administrative buildings outside.

Mapdrawers also split up this
East Austin voting precinct.

Added to CD-35: an arrowhead-shaped swath of the precinct that included apartment complexes where many Hispanics live.

Mapdrawers said in court that they also increased the district’s Hispanic population by adding this “squiggle” in North Austin.

Block-level racial data shows how carefully the boundaries were drawn. Mapdrawers stretched the boundaries several miles north to take in a cluster of Hispanic voters in this area.

But even those efforts weren’t enough to get the district’s Hispanic population to 50 percent, so mapdrawers headed down Interstate 35.

By carving a narrow strip along this major highway, they sliced through smaller suburban cities, such as Kyle, San Marcos and New Braunfels without including many of their voters.

Mapdrawers eventually made it down to Bexar County — home to San Antonio’s Hispanic-majority population.

In explaining the maps, mapdrawers said they considered factors beyond race in drawing the district, including requests from lawmakers to weigh the district more heavily toward Bexar County. But mapdrawers said they were also looking to increase the district’s share of Hispanics.

Mapdrawers also noted that the district was drawn to exclude a swath of north Bexar County where few Hispanics live.

As you can see on the map, areas surrounding Alamo Heights and Terrell Hills, for instance, have a very low share of Hispanic voters.

The result of this exhaustive exercise? The creation of one of the most gerrymandered districts in the country.

That was because of mapdrawers’ emphasis on race in drawing the district, judges ruled. In Travis County, for instance, the boundaries “do not match up with any city boundaries, with House districts, or with any recognizable communities of interest other than race,” they wrote.

Three congressional election cycles have played out with these boundaries, but they may have to change for 2018.

The federal judges ruled last week that the discriminatory “taint” of the original 2011 map carried over into two congressional districts left unchanged in the map Texas adopted in 2013.

Doggett’s district was one of them.

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