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Texas Governor Greg Abbott yesterday approved the redesign of the election maps that chart a safer path for the Republican majority, leaving the opposition in hopes that the courts will block the rigged districts before they can be used for elections. of 2022.
Abbott approved the maps on Monday, a spokeswoman said. The governor’s office did not make an announcement.
Civil rights groups have already filed lawsuits accusing Republican cartographers of marginalizing black and Latino residents that have led to the state’s rapid growth. Texas added 4 million new residents since 2010, but under new maps drawn by the federal House of Representatives, Republicans did not add any new districts where Hispanics are in the majority.
The new maps end a troubled year for voting rights in Texas, where Democrats left the state a few months ago to begin a 38-day strike to protest electoral reform.
“The only time communities of color can get justice is by going to court,” said Democratic State Representative Rafael Anchia, before the final vote on the maps in the state’s lower house last week.
The newly approved maps signify the end of the electoral redistricting process that takes place once a decade in the state, and where legislators decide how the nearly 30 million residents of Texas are divided into political districts and who is elected to represent them. . Texas was the only state to receive two additional seats in Congress after the 2020 census, adding to the entity’s already enormous political weight.
The Mexican-American caucus of the state Congress, made up mostly of Democrats, seeks to obtain documents that influenced the redesign of the maps. The Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, along with other minority and electoral rights groups, also filed a separate lawsuit in federal court to challenge the redesign.
According to census figures, more than nine out of 10 people who came to live in Texas in the last decade were people of color.
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