http://www.statesman.com/metrostate/content/custom/blogs/lasso/The main business of the Voting Section is still passing judgment on legislative redistricting in areas that have a history of discrimination. Under Ashcroft, its actions have consistently favored Republicans — for instance, in Georgia, where the department challenged the Democrats’ gerrymander, and in Mississippi, where the Voting Section stalled the redistricting process for so long that a pro-Republican redistricting plan went into effect by default. The Voting Section’s role in the controversial redistricting of Texas was more direct and, ultimately, more significant. After the 2000 census, Texas, like most states, put through a new redistricting plan. Then, after the midterm elections, Tom DeLay, the House Majority Leader, who is from Houston, engineered passage of a revised congressional redistricting plan through the state legislature, which may mean a shift of as many as seven seats from the Democrats to the Republicans. It was unprecedented for a state to make a second redistricting plan after a post-census plan had been adopted. When the DeLay plan was submitted to the Justice Department for approval, career officials in the Voting Section produced an internal legal opinion of seventy-three pages, with seventeen hundred and fifty pages of supporting documents, arguing that the plan should be rejected as a retrogression of minority rights. However, according to people familiar with the deliberations, the political staff of the Voting Section exercised its right to overrule that decision and approved the DeLay plan, which is now in effect for the 2004 elections.
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