HOUSTON -- Here’s a civics class pop quiz: When’s the next time Texans will have a chance to vote?
Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know the answer. Even the experts are stumped.
Actually, it’s a trick question. Nobody knows when Texas will hold its political primaries. And in many cases, nobody knows which voters will end up in which districts.
A dizzyingly complicated series of court challenges over the state’s redrawn legislative lines has thrown the 2012 Texas election season into chaos. With judges still reviewing the proposed maps assigning voters to legislative districts, the March primaries have been postponed at least a month and probably longer.
So politicians not only don’t know when the primaries will happen, they also don’t know where their district lines will be drawn. That means they aren’t sure where they should campaign, which hands they should shake and which babies they should kiss.
“We figure at this rate, we should just push ‘em back to November and hold all the elections on one day,” jokes Randy Weber, a Republican state representative who’s running for Congress. “Save the taxpayers’ money.”
Blame it on redistricting, the ugly process by which politicians basically pick their voters. At least every ten years, Texas lawmakers draw maps dividing the state into districts for seats in Congress and the state legislature.
Republicans control the legislature, so they drew maps designed to maximize the number of GOP seats. Democrats and minority groups challenged the maps, alleging the district lines violate the Voting Rights Act by creating only one new majority Latino district.
Texas usually asks the U.S. Justice Department to “pre-clear” its redistricting maps. But with Democrats controlling the Justice Department, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott decided to try a different tactic, filing suit in Washington DC.
Meanwhile, minority groups filed suit in federal court in San Antonio, where judges took the extraordinary step of deciding to draw their own maps. Abbott challenged that and took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The tangled legal mess has put the Texas primaries on hold, raising a seemingly endless list of complications and questions.
“When will the primaries be held?” asked Bob Stein, a political science professor at Rice University who’s worked on the redistricting case. “What races will be on that primary date? Will they be the statewide races and all the country and the state legislative races? Will we split them up?”
Beyond the confusion, shifting primary dates sets off a cascade of complications. For example, many polling places are based in neighborhood schools. But if the primary shifts to the summer months when most schools are closed, those polling places will move and voter turnout may decline.
A lower voter turnout would work against moderate candidates like David Dewhurst, the lieutenant governor who’s running for the U.S. Senate, Stein says.
A later primary will also force well-funded candidates to spend more money on advertising, keeping their names before the public for a longer stretch of time. That could be good news for radio and television stations, as well as political consultants who pocket commissions for buying advertising time.
But the longer campaign season could help grassroots campaigners with shallow pockets. They’ll have more time to knock on doors, shake hands at party events and personally meet voters – if they can figure out who’ll eventually vote in their districts.
“Some of us are going to the areas that we know will probably be in our district,” says Daniel McCool, a Republican candidate for the Texas Senate. “But you have some of the other candidates that their whole districts have shifted miles. They don’t even know who to have contact with.”
That’s the tough civics lesson of the 2012 Texas primaries.
