Thread by @candacefor24

As many Texans have spent their October carving pumpkins with their families, our legislature has been carving our districts. In the spirit of my favorite holiday and my least favorite special session, I'm medicating with candy. And I'm sharing it all with you.

Buckle up.
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Before we get to Texas, let's discuss the United Peeps of Halloween. The population of the UPH is 40% Ghost peeps, and 60% Pumpkin peeps.

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If we want to cut Halloween into 5 equal districts, vertically gives the most ideal representation. Their population is equal to the members they get to send to their legislative chamber.

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But what if our Pumpkin peeps decide to consolidate that sweet, sweet power? They can change the way that districts are divided, unfairly breaking up Ghosts and gobbling up all the offices. Pumpkins won't have to negotiate to make laws, making Ghosts politically invisible.

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Ghosts bide their time and seek revenge. They win back their legislative chamber, drifting through barriers placed in front of them. Now in power, they utilize a little math to figure out how to pack some Pumpkins, and crack others. They carved Pumpkins out of power.

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What happened to Ghosts one cycle and Pumpkins the next is called "gerrymandering." This happens when elected officials disregard organic communities by drawing lines to pick the voters they want and purge the voters they don't.

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Sadly, this doesn't just happen to marshmallow peeps. The term "gerrymandering" refers to Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry drawing bespoke districts for his party in 1812. One district's shape was so horrifying that illustrator Elkanah Tisdale drew it as a salamander...

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...which was quickly portmanteaued with his name. Despite Gerry's lengthy career and many accomplishments, this picture would become the sole part of this Founding Father's legacy.

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Gerrymandering has existed as a tool for about as long as we've existed as a country, but it's getting scarier. With sophisticated redistricting software, lawmakers are able to slice and dice voters and communities down to the city block (and sometimes down to houses).

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Let's get to Texas: Here are a number of State House districts in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex that look more like monsters out of Tisdale's or Stephen King's imaginations than communities.

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These unnatural shapes are not nearly as ghastly as what they do to Texans: without fair representation, politics become polarized and people's needs are overlooked, with lawmakers focused on dolling out treats to the fringes instead of solving problems (like our power grid).
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This was my Congressional District #TX24 about a month ago. This DFW district was a majority-minority (POC) district, nearly a quarter of which I served when I was elected to the Carrollton-Farmers Branch school board.

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It was originally drawn to oust a Democrat nearly 2 decades ago, and it's now being re-drawn to shore up the Republican who won this seat against me by less than a point and a half.
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This is the new version of Congressional District 24. It looks like a butterfly shrimp, with a tail that's 73% White. (It also happens to lack my home in Denton County.)

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Here they are in relation to each other. You can see how the district has expanded both east and west, making it far less compact. But why? Why would you want it to be less compact?

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Let's discuss the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" of #TX24. Here are the pieces that were unceremoniously hacked off (or "cracked") and given to other districts. Each of these sections has high numbers of minority/POC populations, many of whom also typically vote for Democrats.

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Here are the parts that a man in a basement of the Texas Capitol (true story) sewed on to either end of #TX24. Each of the new pieces of this Franken-district has a significant GOP majority, majorly stacking the next race in Beth Van Duyne's favor. Is this illegal? Probably?
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Republicans in Texas have a history of creating bad maps, and then letting the courts tell them how far they can discriminate years later. The system is designed so that there's little upside to playing fair (if all you care about is the clinging to a majority).

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Sometimes monster mapmakers very get lucky. In 2020 conservative Justices bent over backwards to justify racially discriminatory maps drawn in Texas in 2011 (and 2013): vox.com/policy-and-pol…

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Zooming out to the entire state, these are roughly what the popular vote would look like in our 38 U.S. Congressional districts if the mad scientists in the #txlege were trying to represent the voters from the 2020 Presidential election. Biden: 18 districts Trump: 20 districts

Of course, the map approved by the GOP-majority Texas legislature does not reflect the popular vote in Texas. We don't register by party in TX, but best estimates suggest under these maps, Democrats lose out on 5 seats.

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Looking at state demographics, the 2020 Census reminded us that Texas is a majority POC (minority) state. In fact, of the 4 million people that moved or were born here over the past 10 years, 95% of them were Asian, Black, and Latino (Latinx, Hispanic).

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Districts don't always have to perfectly reflect race and ethnicity, but in Texas a case could be made for 15 Latino (Latinx/Hispanic) and 5 Black districts. Instead we end up with no Black, 7 Latino, and 23 White majority districts (plus 6 White plurality seats).

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What can we do? We have to outwork the lines as much as possible by registering peeps to vote, voting in every election ourselves, and supporting local candidates. Here's a few orgs registering Texas peeps:

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The End? A special thanks to my son who helped me set up all the candy districts and only ate one constituent. Also, thank you to the Virginia Public Access Project @vpapupdates, whose work inspired this truly American horror story.

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