For this editorial, I used an article and recent class reading and discussion to get me started on a topic we have recently studied in class and relate it to what's currently going on in Texas politics.
The Austin Statesman article "Travis County Will Be Split Four Ways Under State Senate Redistricting Map" of May 12, 2011 by Mike Ward presents the constant issues that plague the Texas government. As the title itself suggests, the article describes the political party turmoil amongst Democrats and Republicans over the drawing out of the current redistricting map. It appears that the Senate decided to divide Texas in such a way as to essentially limit the Democratic power by reassigning political 'coverage'. As such, the Democrats are not in agreement with the new redistricting poll and it must go into revision. This bickering over redistricting of Texas is the very similar issue that the Senate faced in 2001, leading to the 2003 crisis.
Specifically, Ward's statistic explain that the Senate holds a Republican majority of 19 to 12 Democrats. This obviously tilts to a huge favor on the part of Republicans gaining a greater position in redistricting than the Democrats. Therefore the results of the Senate's decision shouldn't come as a huge surprise to be bending towards favoring Republican senators.
Most importantly, it is obvious that this system of redistricting is no longer working as members of the redistricting committee are being left out of the process of redistricting. Senator Zaffirini after all herself claims that as a board member she never actually found out about her own new alignment until she was handed the redistricting map. If its true, that hardly seems fair. If there are decisions to be made about redistricting I feel that all parties should be present for voting the final decision and aware of their own jurisdiction.
If the redistricting process was no longer a duty assigned to the Senate, but chosen by a non-partisan party, then this gerrymandering would finally come to an end. Complicated as it is, the Texas government needs to be simplified. Obviously, the government constantly needs redistricting to be re-mapped by non-partisan groups anyway, so why not make it a law? This would eliminate at least some of the nasty bickering amongst the two parties and perhaps allow the growing independent voters of Texas to agree with more of what's going on. Additionally, this could help the agitated voters, who are constantly wavering between parties due to the unnecessary bitterness, to finally settle down with a vote and cut down on the split ticket voting.
In conclusion, it simply sounds like the Texas Senate needs help with forming fair redistricting maps. Obviously the current process is not working and causing more problems than good. A new format of going about the process could help save lots of people the energy put in fighting each other towards a common good for the Texas people. After all, its not meant to be about who's winning Republicans or Democrats, but how to best serve Texans as a whole.
Granted, this will probably involve a lot of participation on the Texas voter front and also a huge amount of effort for legislators etc to pass the law. However, I think the benefits outweigh the cost that this process is causing to general attitude towards Texas politics. Perhaps this way Texans could be encouraged to vote more as they would feel their voices will be better heard and not ignored due to silly inter political "i win, you loose" teasing. Who cares?! I would like to believe people have grown up since high school, especially grown humans who are meant to represent the state of Texas.
*I feel it is important to note that being a foreign student, I find it hard to fight for either party which probably explains my stance. Even though I feel slightly ridiculous fighting for a certain position in a problem that is not mine to begin with, I was simply responding to the assignment at hand as I would if I were an American citizen with a right to vote.*
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