Austin Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission

 On Saturday, January 23rd, the Austin City Auditor used a random sampling application to select the first eight members of Austin's Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission (ICRC). With the selection of these members, my term as a member of the first ICRC ended. I remain interested in the Commission and its efforts to ensure fair and legal districts for Austin's City Council.

The first eight members are listed below:



There can be no doubt that the first members are diverse, well-educated, and represent most of Austin's current districts. These eight will meet and select the remaining six members from the list of 60 most qualified applicants. The eight commissioners will need to include one student member (there are two students among the 60 most qualified applicants). They should ensure that the districts that aren't currently represented get representation, that the ethnic composition of the ICRC reflects the ethnic composition of Austin, and that the gender identity reflects the gender identity of Austin.

Join me as the Commission gets started by choosing the remaining six members, selects its staff, and starts the public hearings that enable them to hear and respond to Austin residents' desires for Austin's ten city council districts.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Whither the Republican Party?

Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes write in The Atlantic magazine: So we arrive at a syllogism: (1) The GOP has become the party of Trumpism. (2) Trumpism is a threat to democratic values and the rule of law. (3) The Republican Party is a threat to democratic values and the rule of law. A syllogism is, according to dictionary.com: 1. Logic. an argument the conclusion of which is supported by two premises, of which one (major premise) contains the term (major term) that is the predicate of the conclusion, and the other (minor premise) contains the term (minor term) that is the subject of the conclusion; common to both premises is a term (middle term) that is excluded from the conclusion. A typical form is “All A is C; all B is A; therefore, all B is C.”. 2. deductive reasoning. 3. an extremely subtle, sophisticated, or deceptive argument. Which definition applies here?   First, has the GOP become the party of Trump? Has he taken control of the party apparatu
Read more

In Defense of a Theory

I’m a big fan of political scientist Seth Masket, but what he wrote in defense of the theory of presidential nominations expounded in The Party Decides intrigues me. First, he notes that his initial defense caused some blowback: Last week at Mischiefs of Faction , I wrote about the book The Party Decides and the extent to which the 2016 is causing trouble for it. I argued that the Republican race isn't providing a very clean test of the theory, while the Democratic race is. This invited substantial pushback from Jonathan Chait , Justin Grimmer , and others, suggesting that I was either protecting the theory from actual testing, or that the theory itself was untestable. So I'd like to clarify a bit and suggest just what evidence we've gathered this year. Then, he goes on to explain more fully: Now, in my recent post, I focused on what I see as the central claim of the book: The party generally gets what it wants. That is, when party elites have selected a
Read more

The Battle for Texas (Part II)

In the first part of this post, I explained what happened in the 2014 general election in Texas. Democrats lost badly statewide and in legislative contests. What is necessary to reverse the results? I strongly believe that the only way to reverse the Republican dominance of Texas state and local elections in to organize precincts in urban and suburban areas of Texas on a multi-block level within voting precincts. What do I have in mind?  As you know, political scientists agree that the most effective method of getting registered voters to vote is face-to-face contacts, preferably by people who they know and who share their values. That means, someone who lives in the neighborhood and whom they see frequently in the neighborhood. Can an organization at this level be created? I have had the good fortune of seeing an operation like this in several precincts in southwest Austin during a runoff election campaign for a city council seat in District 8. Last weekend, precinct c
Read more