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The U.S. Department of Justice will act to crack down on the sort of “race-based gerrymandering” at the heart of the Texas redistricting fight, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said Tuesday.
“We are ensuring that all 50 states have and continue to have clean voter roles. We are challenging efforts to suppress or dilute the vote. We are attacking illegal race-based gerrymandering. And we are protecting ballot access for all Americans,” said Dhillon, who leads the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, in a video posted Tuesday marking the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
After Democrats fled the state in an attempt to stop Republicans’ attempt to redraw districts, Texas Governor Greg Abbott called on the Texas Department of Public Safety to arrest them for abandoning their duties.
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The ongoing debate stems from a letter by the Department of Justice that told Texas officials that the current congressional maps in Texas promote racial vote dilution in violation of the Voting Rights Act. The letter, in turn, spurred Abbott to call a special legislative session to begin the process of redrawing the state’s maps.
“We have notified Texas of grave concerns about congressional districts drawn with racial motivations, and we are suing other jurisdictions where there is evidence of ineligible voters on their voter rolls,” Dhillon continued Wednesday. “Our job is to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat. On this anniversary we honor the voting rights act not just by remembering it but by enforcing it for all Americans.”
Democrats have decried Republicans for pushing a partisan process, but the Justice Department has said the move is an effort to promote fairer districts. The DOJ’s July letter says four of Texas’s districts currently constitute “unconstitutional ’coalition districts.'” The letter goes on to assert that courts have ruled that “coalition districts” run afoul of the Voting Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment.
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“We took a look at Texas, and we found that four of their districts in Texas are comprised of these so-called coalition districts,” Dhillon said Tuesday on the “Just the News, No Noise,” a show aired by Real America’s Voice.
“In other words, to get to a special minority district, you have to add together multiple minorities or count on a certain percentage of a crossover white vote. And this is too complex, too weird and too inconsistent with equal protection.”
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