October 1, 2012
» Washington Post: For Maryland Democrats, redistricting referendum forces a look in the mirror » Washington Post: Maryland ad war coming over same-sex marriage vote » Washington Post: Costs, benefits of Md. Dream Act hard for voters to measure I foresee a lot of interesting post-election analysis out of Maryland this season. That is all. [...]
September 2, 2011
» Wash. Post/The Fix: Latino leaders pessimistic about new Latino districts Let me start by saying that I think The Fix’s Aaron Blake is generally one of the better election reporters out there. But this is the sort of reporting that generally sends my forehead in the general direction of a brick wall …. … [...]
April 1, 2011
File this under “Ain’t Gonna Happen,” but this is the first semi-reasonable basis of a plan that I landed on after doodling around with Harris County State Rep districts. The assumption here is that there will still be 25 seats. But the dicier assumption is that Beverly Woolley draws herself out. For that reason, I [...]
February 25, 2011
Just in case anyone stumbling onto the blog is looking for “those maps,” here’s a revised version of the original I posted. It’s a little bit cleaner in terms of neighborhood contiguity, but still has some potential questions about political feasibility. A bit of a repeat point from the original map, but my bias are [...]
February 23, 2011
» Chron: City to challenge census count Mayor Parker throws a yellow flag onto the field, essentially asking for a recount … The city of Houston will ask the U.S. Census Bureau to change its official count, raising questions about whether some apartment complexes or even entire neighborhoods were missed. Houston’s population is 2,099,451, according [...]
I suspect that the issue is one of citizenship.
It doesn’t matter how many folks of Hispanic heritage live in the city if most of them are ineligible to vote while the members of the African-American community are citizens who can vote.
And that does not get into the issue of immigration status…
It accounts for part, but not enough to warrant the full measure of the situation. The Census Bureau’s ACS data has Compton at about 22% non-citizen and 62% Hispanic. Some quick algebra still suggests that the overall citizen population is 51% Hispanic. That’ll come down a few notches due to age distribution being younger for Hispanic, but it’ll still be right at about half the population with zero members of council that reflect that.
It’s likelier that language and communication networks used in different communities are the bigger reason for this. That’s a commonality across Hispanic communities nationwide.
Another factor that doesn’t get discussed much is that Compton, like a lot of towns, hold their election in a month other than November and in odd-numbered years. Anytime you hold an election that doesn’t coincide with a Presidential election, turnout overall drops. But it drops more precipitously among poorer residents. It’s nowhere near the same as outright voter suppression, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a factor that gets looked at as a remedy for situations like this.