I will be the first to admit that gerrymandering is not an exclusively Republican demesne, but it cannot be denied that Republicans are the masters at using it to disenfranchise minority voters, since several Republican dominated states are under court order, because their redistricting plans were racist by design. Now Rick Perry and Texas Republicans are bent out of shape, because the redistricting plan done by the District Court (and a conservative one at that), may give Democrats the four new House seats Texas gets because of population growth.

The U.S. Supreme Court was asked Monday to intervene in a partisan political dispute from Texas and to block the use of a new, judge-drawn map of its congressional districts that could cost Republicans four or more seats in the House of Representatives. Texas Gov. Rick Perry urged the high court to act quickly to set aside the map drawn by federal judges and instead to allow the Lone Star State to elect its House members under a map drawn by the Republican-controlled Legislature. Perry’s appeal denounced the judges’ map as a “runaway plan that imposes an extreme redistricting scheme” on Texas. Because of a population surge, Texas is due four more seats in the House, giving it a total of 36 representatives. But it is unclear whether its congressional delegation will be elected in 2012 in districts devised by the GOP or instead under the judge-drawn map. Political experts say the judges’ map gives Democrats a good chance of winning three or more extra seats in Congress. The state’s attorneys asked the justices to rule soon on its emergency appeal. They said candidates for Congress must file to run between today and Dec. 15, and they need to know where their districts will be located. The legal dispute concerns the Voting Rights Act and its provisions requiring that minorities have a reasonable chance to elect candidates of their choice… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <LA Times>

On the surface, it seems unfair that all the new seats in a right leaning state should go to Democrats, until you know the rest of the story.

Latino voters, especially in the West, tend to vote for Democrats, due to Republican racism. The increase in Texas’ Latino population in this census is actually a bit higher that the increase in Texas’ total population. Therefore it is only natural that the seats occasioned by Latino population growth should give Latino voters, and therefore Democrats an edge. Conversely the Republican plan gives all four new seats to Republicans. Absorbing all those Latino voters into Republican districts took a prodigious gerrymandering effort by the GOP.