The former AG was in town as part of his national activism on the topic.
Texas is “ground zero” in a national effort launching Saturday to ensure that every American’s vote counts in upcoming elections, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in Houston this week.
Holder, who led the Justice Department from 2009 to 2015 under President Barack Obama, is leading a project called “All on the Line,” ahead of the 2020 Census, focusing on a fight against gerrymandering expected with the redistricting process the following year.
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The meeting in Houston was a small gathering that allowed for a dynamic conversation between Holder and leaders of organizations that helped to turn out voters in the midterm elections last year. Representatives of the Texas Organizing Project, the Texas Civil Rights Project, MOVE Texas, Texas Freedom Network, Houston in Action, and Battleground Texas were among those present.
Jolt, a youth organization that organized the Houston gathering, will launch “a major campaign with two different approaches,” said Amanda Rocha, the organization’s leader in Houston. One will be an online initiative focused on the importance of being counted in the Census, while the other will be “a door to door canvasing helping people understand what’s a stake and addressing their concerns,” she said.
Holder said it can be difficult to engage people on issues like redistricting and gerrmandering, which might sound “kind of wonky, kind of ethereal.”
“Well, if you care about a woman’s right to choose, if you care about voter suppression, if you care about criminal justice reform, if you care about climate, if you care about health care, the expansion of Medicaid, all of these things are determined at the state level and by these gerrymandered state legislators,” Holder said.
Gerrymandering is a tactic used by state legislators to draw the lines of electoral districts in a way that provides their party an unfair advantage.
Holder said a redistricting process should reflect the composition of the people in the areas drawn fairly, informed by the census results. But parties sometimes draw strangely shaped lines to guarantee dominance in their district, based, for example, on its racial composition as a predictor of voting patterns.
“We are trying to break up this whole gerrymandering. We want to make sure that, come 2021, we have a fair process,’ said Holder.
The purpose of the campaign is “not gerrymandering for Democrats, I want to make that very clear,” he said. “If we make this a fair fight between conservative Republicans, Democrats, progressives, Democrats and progressives will do just fine.”
What this comes down to is a goal for Democrats, in Texas and elsewhere, for 2020. We saw what happened following the 2010 elections when Republicans took control of state legislatures across the country, and drew districts for themselves that ensured their continued control even in closely divided states. The 2020 election is just as important, for the same reason. If you don’t have any control over the redistricting process, then redistricting is done to you, and there’s no reason to believe the federal courts as they now stand will do anything about it. The one thing Democrats in Texas can do is win control of the House. That’s a tall order, as it will take winning 20 seats, but there are lots of targets and Presidential year turnout should help.
I’ve talked several times about how Republicans are going to have some tough decisions to make about redistricting in 2021, given the results of the 2018 election and the likelihood of a similar election in 2020. Protecting their incumbents will be a challenge, especially given the assumption that will need to be made about the basic partisan composition of the state. All this presumes it will be Republicans making those decisions. Give Democrats a majority in the House and the calculus changes completely. That may be the only realistic path to a non-partisan redistricting commission going forward. The point of this activism by Eric Holder, and the main thing people should take away from these meetings, is that this is a primary goal for 2020, because it will set the stage for the decade to follow. If you need a reason to get ready to work as hard in 2020 as you did in 2018, this is it.
For that matter, Texas no longer has to go through preclearance in 2021 as it did in 2011, so this could be a disaster. The 2011 congressional map (C149) that originally passed the legislature didn’t have Marc Veasey’s district. It was the courts that forced CD-33 to be a minority opportunity district. So with a Republican controlled State House without having to go through preclearance, we should expect plenty of shenanigans.
Eric Holder? Whatever happened to that whole contempt of Congress thing? Funny everyone is screeching about Barr, but when Holder told Congress to shove it, yeah, whole lotta nothing.
“n September 2012, after a nineteen-month review, the United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General cleared the Attorney General of any wrongdoing with regard to Fast and Furious, stating that there was “no evidence” that Holder knew about the operation before early 2011. The report did cite fourteen lower ranking officials for possible disciplinary action.[137] Holder responded to the internal investigation, saying “It is unfortunate that some were so quick to make baseless accusations before they possessed the facts about these operations – accusations that turned out to be without foundation and that have caused a great deal of unnecessary harm and confusion.”[138]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Holder#Operation_Fast_and_Furious