Criticism of The Plan
Democrats criticized the 2003 redistricting, citing the lack of precedent for redistricting twice in a decade, and argued that it was being done for purely political gain and resulted in gerrymandering. Public comments by some Republicans lent support to this claim, since many discussed their expectations of picking up several Republican seats. Some minority groups argued the plan was unconstitutional, as it would dilute their influence and possibly violate the "one-person-one-vote" principle of redistricting. Republicans argued that, since most voters in the state were Republicans, it was appropriate that the party have a majority in the federal legislative delegation.
The 2004 elections under the new redistricting resulted in Texas Republicans gaining a majority of House seats by a 21–11 margin, a 2/1 ratio in terms of seats. This was larger than the 61/38 voting ratio of Republican to Democratic voting in the Presidential race. It was more lopsided that the total results in the 32 House races, which resulted in 56/40/3 for Republican to Democratic voting (the two main parties did not run in four districts).
Read more about this topic: 2003 Texas Redistricting
Famous quotes containing the words criticism of, criticism and/or plan:
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Architect. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.”
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914)