More Democrats Equal More Power for Republicans in Texas Math
- Redrawing district lines could help GOP retake the U.S. House
- Supreme Court ruling makes it harder to challenge such efforts
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Texas has won two new congressional seats thanks to a surge in the population of people of color, who vote more often for Democrats. But the state’s Republicans will benefit because they’ll draw the maps allocating political power for the next decade.
The GOP-controlled legislature is expected to do what it did a decade ago when growth in minority communities earned the state four new congressional districts: try to benefit White Republicans. They’ll do so through the dark art of gerrymandering, by either crowding the other party’s voters into a limited number of districts or splitting them up so they’re outnumbered. Packing or cracking it’s called, respectively.