Judges deciding TX redistricting feel deadline pressure, pass it down

This just has the air of turning out badly for everybody.

Federal redistricting judges in San Antonio want to see if they can get agreement from the parties on political maps in time for an April 3 primary and said they are "giving serious consideration" to split primaries if no agreement can be reached by the first week of February.

The three federal judges said in an order issued this afternoon that they will meet with the parties on Friday instead of waiting until Feb. 1.

The five-page order is full of dates and deadlines:

• The judges say they will almost certainly move a candidate filing deadline (my emphasis) now set for Feb. 1.
• They said the parties should confer and submit agreed-upon interim maps for legislative and congressional elections by Feb. 6 if they "wish to maintain the current election schedule." If they can't agree, the judges want a list of districts in the Legislature's maps that each party no longer objects to.
• The parties are involved in hearings in Washington, D.C., where a separate panel of three federal judges is deciding whether the Legislature's maps violate preclearance provisions of the federal Voting Rights Act. Ideally, the San Antonio judges would have that court's ruling in hand before it approves redistricting maps. It's asking the lawyers to give the Washington court a nudge: "With high respect for the importance of that proceeding and the prerogatives of that court, this Court hereby requests both sides in the San Antonio proceedings to request, on behalf of this Court, that the D.C. Court attempt to rule on the Section 5 issues in time for this court to incorporate those decisions into its ultimate decision on the redistricting plans for the 2012 elections for the Texas House of Representatives, the Texas Senate, and the U.S. Congress."
• The Texas judges say they are giving "serious consideration to whether a so-called 'split primary' will be required" for this year's elections, and asked the lawyers to be ready to talk about it at the end of the week. They also want lawyers for the state to be ready to say whether the state would be prepared to reimburse counties and the political parties for the "substantial additional expense of a split primary."
• The judges asked for comments on the idea of a presidential primary on April 3 with most or all other elections held later. The earlier presidential primary would relieve the Republican and Democratic political parties, which hope to have the primary elections well before their state conventions in June. The Republican Party of Texas has suggested the split primary on several occasions; the Democratic Party, in filings this week, said it would prefer a unified primary if possible.

Hustled-up court decisions, rushed maps, split primaries, new voting requirements ... it all adds up to confused voters and poor turnout.

More from Michael Li. Shorter Michael Li, from Facebook:

BREAKING: Court says to keep unified April 3 primary, parties will need to agree on interim maps by 2/6. Otherwise, court giving 'series consideration' to split primary; wants to know if state will commit to reimburse added costs. Court considering presidential only primary on 4/3 or presidential + countywide/whole county on 4/3.

Election officials from your local precinct all the way to the Secretary of State will be pressured to make decisions -- or wait for decisions to be made. Candidates, potential and incumbent, won't know what the districts they intend to represent will look like -- and neither will the voters, until very late in the process. All while Republicans keep doing their dead-level best to gum up the works, disenfranchising even their own voters as they do.

This is what one-party rule looks like, from the bottom up.

Update:

When the San Antonio court set Feb 1st as the candidate filing deadline for a April 3rd election date organizations representing Texas counties told the court in a pleading that they had “serious reservations and concerns” about their ability to comply with the April 3rd election schedule. The county organizations said that compliance would be “extremely difficult and expensive” if even physically possible...” The counties said the Feb 1st — April 3rd timeline wouldn't leave them enough time to prepare an election that usually takes six to seven weeks to prepare. Today, the Republican Party suggests lopping another week off the April 3rd timeline.

County election officials must have election precincts mapped, voter registration cards printed and mailed, ballots prepared, and voting machines programmed and delivered to polling locations not by April 3rd, but a few days before March 19th, the first day of early voting for the April 3rd election date.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance thanks South Carolina for all the laughs as it brings you this week's blog roundup.

The big story last week was the SCOTUS ruling on interim redistricting maps. Off the Kuff has an initial look.

It turns out that PDiddie and Paula Deen have more in common than just their initials; there's also a morality tale involved. Read "Paula Deen, diabetes, and Novo Nordisk" at Brains and Eggs.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is tired of the media ignoring grossly untrue, inflammatory, and just plain disgusting things Republicans like Rick Perry say.

Perry's run for the presidency is over! WCNews at Eye On Williamson posts on it here: Good riddance for now; Perry drops out.

This was a big week of action culminating in the defeat (for the time being) of SOPA, including January 18 when many sites blacked themselves out. Darth Politico refused to go dark, and instead went dork -- with a snark/irony blog supporting SOPA (or "Why Death Stars are a good thing").

At TexasKaos, Libby Shaw mourns for Texas in "Poor Texas: Forrest Homer Simpson is Coming Back". An eloquent requiem for a candidate who brought untold levels of derision to our state when he revealed how truly shallow and narcissistic he is. Give it a read!

Neil at Texas Liberal wrote this week abour how Houston school board member Manuel Rodriguez got away with using anti-gay campaign materials in his recent re-election victory. Everyday citizens, civil rights groups and the Houston GLBT political caucus all gave Mr. Rodriguez a free pass despite his hateful words.

Sunday Funnies

The South Carolina subheadlines: Colbert, Cain, Santorum and Paul

Jason Stanford:

Stephen Colbert might be funny, but his exploratory campaign is no joke. The point he’s been assiduously making on “The Colbert Report” is a smart bomb wrapped inside of an absurd conundrum. Simply put, there is no greater force for campaign finance these days than Colbert. By following the tortured laws and starting his own super PAC, Colbert has unleashed a prank that could embarrass the body politic into real change.

Stephen Colbert is the most talented improvisational comedian of his generation. Only one other person in my lifetime even comes close, and he never tried to stay in a single character 100% of the time. (Sasha Baron Cohen is a solid-finishing third and Pee Wee Herman comes in a fairly distant fourth, mostly because of his tragi-comic offstage altercations.)

... Colbert mocked the reductionist absurdity of the law that danced around limits to corporate influence in politics.

“It’s how much speech they can express, because money comes from speech. … Money equals speech,” said Colbert, who then challenged (ABC's George) Stephanopoulos: “Corporations are people. You won’t weigh in on whether some people are people? That seems kind of racist.”

Is any of this more absurd than Mitt Romney denying culpability for what his super PAC does because, as he claimed in Monday’s debate, he hasn’t talked to those guys in “months”? Or, for that matter, Romney’s contention that corporations are people?

Colbert's rally with fellow clown Herman Cain in Charleston yesterday was the purest poltical irony yet seen in modern times.



"If corporations are people, then I'm a people person. The Lockheed Martin Luther Burger King, if you will."

Chuck Todd sputtered that Colbert was 'making a mockery' of the political process. Dude: you obviously haven't been paying much attention to politics over the years. Google Pat Paulsen. This has been going on since before you were born. Todd did get one thing right, though...

While expressing admiration for how Colbert has exposed a lot of the idiocy involved with the marriage of politics and money, and saying he enjoys his show, Todd went after both Colbert and Jon Stewart for mocking members of the media, then backing off and saying “we’re just comedians” when the members of the media call them out on it. “Actually, no you’re not [comedians] anymore,” Todd said. “You are mocking what we’re doing, and you want a place in this, then you are also going to be held accountable for how you cover and how you do your job.”

Yeah, somebody has mentioned that before. Back to the Palmetto Bug State and the farce of actual Republican politicians.

With the race seemingly between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, Republican rival Rick Santorum is bracing for a setback and looking ahead to the next contest: Florida. [...]

Romney and Gingrich were battling for the top spot in South Carolina and Santorum was looking to post an acceptable showing. During campaign stops on Friday, he cast himself as a Goldilocks candidate: just right when compared to Gingrich's "too hot" rhetoric and Romney's "too cold" personality.

Santorum also looked to disqualify the fourth candidate in the race, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. Santorum said there were three candidates who could capture the GOP nomination and cast libertarian favorite Paul as a gadfly annoyance.

That might sting a little more if it came from a guy who remembered to pay the fee for his law license. I'm thinking that Santorum's parochial school taunts aren't having as much effect as he is praying for. Still, it's probably enough to burn the bridge between Mr. Frothy Mixture's camp and Dr. No's. Not that they ever had much in common anyway.

Ron Paul finished a strong third in the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3 and a distant second to Romney in New Hampshire. Although he has not campaigned as much in South Carolina as he did in Iowa, he is likely to at least triple his South Carolina support from 2008 (which was 4%).

The Paul campaign has spent about $1.5 million on television advertising in South Carolina, including a spiffy spot that features a number of federal agencies going up in smoke. Beyond the Palmetto State, the campaign has signaled it will make only a modest effort in Florida because of the high cost of campaigning and because the state is unlikely to field a full slate of delegates. Florida defied Republican Party rules by moving its primary to Jan. 31; as punishment, the party has threatened to strip the state of some of its delegates.

Most observers say Paul is unlikely to get above the 20 percent mark in the upcoming primaries in Florida, Missouri, Arizona and Michigan but should do well in the upcoming caucus states of Nevada, Colorado, Minnesota and Maine. Paul’s fervent believers tend to turn out for caucuses, as they did in Iowa.

The sooner Ron Paul slides back over to the Libertarians, the more fun it will be for everybody. One last snip of brilliance:

“Ron Paul’s expected third-place finish is not that much of a surprise, as Newt Gingrich has now firmly established himself as the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney,” said Rice University political scientist Mark Jones. “What we have witnessed is less Ron Paul rising to third place and more Rick Santorum dropping to fourth place from the highs he received immediately following his success in Iowa.”

"What we have witnessed". Keep in mind that Rice University's Mark Jones is one of the most massive dumbasses who wears the title 'political scientist' ever. It's not that he gets everything wrong. He actually gets something right once in awhile (acorn/blind hog); it's that he gets paid tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of dollars for dreck like that.

People like Mark Jones are the ones making a mockery of the political process in this country. Him, and this guy:

Fox News ‘A-Team’ Psychologist: Being Married Three Times Could Make Gingrich A Better President

No excerpt. Go read it for yourself; just be prepared to piss yourself laughing.

Update: FTR, this is what 'political science' looks like.