TEXAS REDISTRICTING
Lots of questions about this. The short answer is ‘yes’ - but some issues need to be resolved and the timing of new maps has to be about perfect.
The San Antonio court holds a hearing on interim maps on February 15. If it gets out new maps quickly - say, by February 16 or 17 and certainly no later than February 20 - that would let the filing period be open for five days to a week. That, in turn, would allow ballot order draws to be held sometime around February 23-26.
After that it takes about 2-3 weeks to print ballots, which means that ballots might not be ready until as late as March 16 in some parts of the state. That’s only a month before an April 17 primary, but the date still might be doable if (and it’s a big if) the following things happen:
- Precinct splits are minimized. If there are a lot of precinct splits in the new maps, counties will need time to redraw precincts and, more importantly, update their voter records. In some counties, the update process has to be done voter by voter in a time consuming process because of the technology the counties use, and that’s one of the reasons counties say they need a lead time of 8 weeks. In other words, it’s not as easy as simply uploading a file. For new precincts, many counties also will need time to find and contract for an election day polling place, which also often is not as easy as it seems. On the other hand, if there are no precinct splits or splits are kept to a minimum, these issues can be avoided. That said, one of the state’s major complaints at the Supreme Court was that the last set of interim maps ignored the state’s precinct splits, so it’s not entirely how flexible the state is willing to be on this point.
- Preclearance. New precinct boundaries also are subject to preclearance under section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The San Antonio court would have to waive this requirement. However, the court has questioned whether it has the legal authority to do so and asked for briefing on the subject. It’s also possible that DOJ might be willing to expedite this process.
- MOVE Act compliance. Federal law requires that mail ballots be sent to military voters 45 days before an election. The court would have to figure out what to do with this requirement since it is almost certain that ballots will not be ready to go out in time. The court previously suggested that one option might be to allow ballots to come in after election day. That, and a willingness by the state to pay for Fedex of ballots, might be a solution.
After April 17, county election representatives have said that they are unable to hold a primary until after the May municipal elections because they need to begin programming and testing voting machines for the municipal elections, with early voting set to begin on April 30.
