Galveston County's redistricting plan provides a serious test case for weakened Voting Rights Act

The U.S. Justice Department is suing Galveston County over its recent redistricting plan, which would eliminate the county's sole majority-minority precinct. It's not the first time the federal government has intervened with the county's redistricting plans.

But federal law has changed dramatically since the last time Washington stepped in, and the Galveston case could be a stress test for the weakened Voting Rights Act.

The 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case of Shelby County v. Holder neutered Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which required historically segregated jurisdictions to get federal preclearance before changing their voting maps. Last year marked the first round of redistricting since that time.

"Without the preclearance component, I think things like this could potentially go on all over the country, and certainly we are a jurisdiction that it obviously happened to us," said Stephen Holmes, Galveston County Commissioner for Precinct 3.

For decades, Precinct 3 was the sole majority-minority precinct in Galveston County. It's now the sole Democratic precinct as well. But the new map radically redrew its territory, pushing it inland and dividing up the county's Black and Hispanic communities among the other three precincts – diluting their voting power, a process known informally as "cracking."

Read more: https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/in-depth/2022/04/27/424127/galveston-countys-redistricting-plan-provides-a-serious-test-case-for-the-weakened-voting-rights-act/


Galveston County commissioners approved map 2 November 12, 2021.