Talk:Politics of Texas

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Moved above from article. --Robert Harrison^{talk contrib} 05:18, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV

I think that this article is biased in the way it describes supposed Democratic gerrymandering after the 1990 census and the subsequent description of the Republican response to that after 2000.

Okay... how would you say it, then, to make it NPOV? Personally, I think both political parties are at fault for the gerrymandering mess here (the Democrats for being arrogant enough to think that they could get away with it when they were in an extreme majority and the Republicans for drawing a vengeful map to "compensate"), and it snowballed to the mess we currently have, but that's editorializing a bit too much and wouldn't be encyclopedic. It's a polarizing issue for many Texans and one we have to show both sides of, and hopefully we can either make everyone happy or at least not disgruntled. Souperman 03:54, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I've made some edits that I hope make the article more NPOV and readable. Should we reove the POV check request? TMS63112 21:31, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I have tried to make some edits to remove the more biased parts of the article that were without cites. Also reworded some sentences to make them NPOV. This article does need more work though. --M Drusus 05:26, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Text rescued from gerrymandering article

I picked the following text from the gerrymandering article, where it was misplaced by some other contributor. I'm putting it here - someone should figure out a way to work it into the article. You may just be able to cut and paste. Scott Ritchie 05:58, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

U.S. congressional districts covering Travis County, Texas (outlined in red) in 2002, left, and 2004. In 2003, Republicans in the Texas legislature redistricted the state, diluting the voting power of the heavily Democratic county by parceling its residents out to more Republican districts.

After a hard-fought campaign in 2002, the Republicans won a majority in the Texas Legislature. Swiftly, they opened up a mid-decade redistricting plan, which was accused of favoring Republicans by using computers to gerrymander the district lines, splitting cities and fracturing traditional communities. The Republicans replied that the old district lines were equally a gerrymander, only to the benefit of the Democrats who had drawn the lines the last time they had been shifted. Indeed, under the old lines Republicans routinely received a healthy majority of votes cast for Congressional races, but a minority of seats. Helen Giddings added that redistricting is the most partisan issue facing the State Legislature. Subject to constitutional requirements established by case law, and in some states to review by the United States Department of Justice to ensure compliance with the federal Voting Rights Act, which bans drawing districts to reduce the voting power of ethnic minorities, the government of each state draws the boundaries for the House districts within the state's borders. While Federal law and court decisions prohibit gerrymandering districts from being drawn to reduce the voting power of protected groups such as ethnic minorities, it is perfectly legal to draw districts to favor one political party or another. Many analysts have argued that sophisticated gerrymandering computer technology plus the fundraising advantages incumbents possess have resulted in a situation where very few of the seats in the House are actually competitive. In 2002, a redistricting year, 356 House races were decided by more than 20 percent, another 41 were decided by 10 to 20 percent, only 38 were decided by less than 10 percent. Of close races, nearly all involved an open seat or a seat whose incumbent had only served one or two terms.

In 2004, nine incumbent Congressmen were defeated for reelection, two in primary races and seven in the general election. However, both of the primary losers, and four of those who lost in the general, were defeated after an unusual mid-decade redistricting warrant controversy in Texas. In only twelve other House contests with an incumbent was the election decided by less than 10 percent.

Even though only a few incumbents were defeated in 2004, the combination of retirements and resignations to run for other offices caused a nearly 10 percent turnover between the 108th and 109th Congresses. This level of turnover is common and exceeds the percentage of turnover in the U.S. Senate. However, of the vacant seats, only three changed party control.

I'm not sure this level of detail is appropriate for an article that gives a broad-brush overview of Texas political history. . .I also have some NPOV concerns about the text. TMS63112 15:51, 24 January 2006 (UTC)