It’s possible to lose an election before it even starts.

Geanie Morrison is running for an eighth term in the Texas House this year. Or not. Roger Williams is running for Congress. Maybe. Lloyd Doggett will have to move to hang on to the Congressional seat he won in 1994. Perhaps.

Up and down the Texas ballot, candidates are waiting to see whether the redrawn political maps give them any chance of winning. Careers, plans and schemes are in the balance.

There are political maps approved by the Legislature. Another set proposed by three federal judges in San Antonio was swatted like a mosquito by the United States Supreme Court. Most important is the map nobody has seen yet.

The San Antonio judges will be drawing again, this time with instructions from the Supremes, trying to produce political lines to be used in Congressional and legislative elections this spring. Those elections were supposed to be March 6 but were pushed to April 3. They could be delayed again, because election administrators — the studiously nonpolitical folks in the eye of this political storm — say it takes 60 to 80 days to throw together an election once the maps are complete.