2. Key Terms/Concepts
• Quorum
– The amount of representatives who must be present
in order to do business in either chamber of the
legislature (2/3 in Texas)
• Voting Rights Act (VRA)
– Section 2: cannot discriminate on the basis of race,
color, or membership in one of the language minority
groups
– Section 5: pre-clearance by the U.S. Justice
Department is required when any changes to voting
procedures (redistricting) takes place.
3. Redistricting• Redrawing of boundaries to create districts
with equal population
• Population distribution is always changing
• Can hurt legislators by taking away loyal voters
• Occasionally, the legislature fails to redistrict
– Under- and over-representation in districts
• Legislative Redistricting Board
– Lieutenant governor, speaker of the House, attorney
general, comptroller of public accounts, commissioner of
the General Land Office
4. Redistricting
• The Texas Constitution’s apportionment
formulas discriminated against heavily
populated areas.
• Reynolds v. Sims (1964)
– USSC: seats in state legislatures must be
apportioned on a population basis
• Kilgarlin v. Martin (1965)
– Federal court applied Reynolds to Texas
5. Redistricting
• Single-member districts
– Voters of a district only elect one senator
– 673,000 people in each senatorial district
– Many districts cover several counties
• Multimember districts
– Voters elect two or more representatives— city
council or state legislature
– 1975: all districts became single-member
– 139,000 people in each representative district
7. Gerrymandering
• Minorities tend to vote for Democrats
• Democrats seek to concentrate minority
voters
• Republicans seek to dilute minority
voters
• Either tendency may cause resentment
among the communities
8. Re-redistricting
• Redistricting only occurs once each decade
unless the district plan violates the Constitution
or a statute
• DeLay urged the Republican majority to take
up redistricting mid-census
– Support from Greg Abbott, Rick Perry, Tom
Craddick
• “When we took over, we decided that we ought
to do congressional redistricting. If we hadn’t
taken control, we wouldn’t have gone ahead
with it. Tom pushed to do it.”
