Turf wars

WHEN carving, Plato said, one should be aware of the natural joints. It is a sound principle, but one that American politicians often forget when it is time to redraw the electoral map. “There's no question that the redistricting process is one of the most partisan things that happens in a legislative body,” says Joaquin Castro, a Democratic state representative from San Antonio who is now running for Congress. He should know. In 2003 he was among more than 50 Democratic legislators who escaped to Oklahoma in an effort to block a Republican-led redistricting map. The revolt failed, and the following year the Republicans picked up six additional seats in the state's congressional delegation.

It was a notorious debacle. But Texas is not the only state where partisans have learned to be creative with the district lines. They have strong incentives to. With a bit of ingenuity it is often possible to draw districts that divide or avoid the opposition's areas of strength.

Texas's current round of redistricting has been less dramatic but equally bewildering. Because of its population growth, the state will get a whopping four new seats in the national House of Representatives. At the beginning of the year, the state legislature was tasked with mapping the new congressional districts, as well as the state House and Senate districts.

When the Republicans came out with their map, none of the new districts favoured a minority candidate. Trey Martinez Fischer, the state representative who heads the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, suspects that was intentional. Much of Texas's population growth is coming from Hispanics, who favour Democrats. But Democrats have so few seats in the legislature that they had little recourse, and the map passed in May. Mr Martinez Fischer says that the caucus's legal counsel had advised him not to worry: the courts would surely want to take a look at it (discriminatory voting practices are illegal).

As expected, the federal Department of Justice declined to authorise the legislature's maps, and the Supreme Court referred the matter to a federal court in San Antonio. Last week, that court offered its own map for the congressional districts. Texas's attorney-general asked the Supreme Court to block it. But barring any further court actions or divine judgment, the lower court's map will stand.

Under the court's map, then, Democrats now have a shot at winning all four of the new seats. And perhaps two of them will be won by Hispanics, who are under-represented in Congress. The process, however, has been draining for the participants. Mr Castro, for example, has switched districts three times in the past two weeks. On the bright side, he says, he felt he had gained a better understanding of the area along the I-35 corridor that connects Austin and San Antonio, along which the new seats lie. These redistricting battles may be even more annoying for voters, forced to stand by while partisans scrabble over turf. The whole point of democracy is that politicians represent the will of the voters. But this is an area where their interests are prone to diverge.