July 1, 2017
By Nick Jimenez
The Hispanic population in Texas is booming. That's the gist of a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau. More than half of the state's increase in population is due to Hispanic growth, the bureau said.
The state's population grew by 2.7 million since 2010, the bureau's estimate said, and 1.4 million of that was in Hispanic growth. That means that 39 percent of the state's population of 27.9 million is now Hispanic.
Meanwhile, the white population only grew by 444,000. White Texans still make up the largest percentage at almost 43 percent.
Yet, if Hispanics are growing in population numbers, why aren't they growing in political power?
A clue to the answer may have come recently when the Associated Press studied the election outcome of Texas congressional races in November using an "efficiency gap" statistical rating.
The study, in effect, showed the power of putting the map drawing pencil in the hand of the Republican Party to the detriment of Hispanics in Texas.
The AP determined that the GOP in Texas may have won as four more additional seats in Congress than they might have expected, all because of the way the Republican-controlled legislature drew the electoral maps.
The "efficiency gap" analysis simply asks how many party votes does it take to win an electoral district. If one party's winner of such a district wins by a lopsided margin, the difference between a comfortable margin and the lopsided margin are considered "wasted" votes. That is those votes weren't needed to decide a winner.
These districts are less "efficient" in use of votes because the difference between the winning party's voting power, and its opposition is so off balance. In a more balanced district, the difference between winning and losing presumably wouldn't be as large and, likely, neither party could presume victory based simply on partisan advantage.
That means a lot translated into Hispanic voting power. In a state where Hispanics historically have voted for the Democratic Party, no Democrat has won a statewide office in decades.
Is it any wonder that Republicans have exerted much of their political effort not to win over this growing body of Hispanic voters but to exclude them from political power?
Republican-led Texas has lost a string of redistricting and voting rights court cases on findings of discrimination.
The latest loss was in March when a three-judge federal panel found that Texas had intentionally discriminated against Hispanic and black voters in drawing its 2011 congressional map.
Specifically, the panel said three districts drawn by the legislature violated either the U.S. Constitution or the Voting Rights Act. One of those congressional districts was the 27th whose incumbent is Blake Farenthold of Corpus Christi.
In case you think that this "efficiency rating" is some sort of academic "can't park their bicycles straight" concoction, consider that the analysis, created by a University of Chicago law professor and a public policy researcher, was used to overturn Wisconsin's redistricting maps in a federal court challenge.
Texas continues to fight all those redistricting and voting rights cases, asserting that its legislature did not discriminate when it "packed" minorities into voting districts. This assured that Democratic districts would stay Democratic but without giving minority voters the chance to win additional seats.
Texas continues to appeal the finding by Corpus Christi federal judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos that it discriminated against minorities by passing the voter photo I.D. law even though trial evidence showed that hundreds of thousands of poor and elderly voters didn't have the required documentation.
Political power won't be handed over to Hispanics. We must do our part by registering to vote and then actually going to the polls. The Hispanic population is still young; only 28 percent of those eligible to vote are Hispanic. Maybe it's discouraging to vote when you feel that the game is rigged against your vote. But that can't be an excuse.
If Hispanics had political leverage, I doubt that the Texas Legislature would have passed Senate Bill 4, the so-called sanctuary cities bill. The law has the clear potential to invite ethnic profiling.
I doubt, too, that the Texas Legislature would treat public schools, where Hispanics make up the bulk of the student body, so miserly in its funding. Neither would university funding have taken such mounting budget cuts.
The latest census report shows how Republican Party is fighting against the demographic tide. The number of Hispanics will continue to grow in Texas and the percentage of the population which is Hispanic will continue to march towards a majority.
It's not a matter of if but when.
Source: Corpus Christi Caller Times
