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From CBS News.

The 2010 census forms are arriving in America’s mailboxes. When the results are in they will show that America remains a nation on the move. People are flowing westward and southward over the last ten years as they have for generations.

For most of the past decade, the allure of space, affordable housing and economic opportunity – not to mention warmer weather – has brought people to the West and South, often at the expense of their northern and midwestern counterparts.

Though that movement slowed with the recent recession and housing bust, changes undergone since 2000 are still poised to alter the county’s political landscape and touch off some heated battles. The next round of redistricting following the census will re-allocate congressional districts and electoral votes among the states.

Once again the South and West will gain some political clout while some districts in the north will vanish, taking influence along with them. If geography is indeed destiny, then America’s future will be increasingly determined by the Sun Belt.

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Last Updated on Thursday, 25 March 2010 07:44

From the Texas Tribune:

In politics, the crayon is mightier than the ballot. A political mapmaker can do more to change the power structure than a herd of consultants with fat bank accounts behind them. And 2011 will be the Year of the Mapmakers.

They’ll take the new census numbers — Texas is expected to have a population of more than 25 million — and use them to draw new congressional and legislative districts for the state. The last time this was done, in 2003, Republican mappers took control of the Texas House by peeling away enough seats from the Democrats to give the GOP the numbers it needed for a majority.

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Last Updated on Wednesday, 24 March 2010 10:21

From the Wall Street Journal.

Lose the battle but win the war—that is the redeeming hope congressional leaders offer to their rank-and-file members on the coming votes on the Obama health-care plan.

While diehards still insist that a government takeover of health care will be a net winner this fall, more and more Democrats understand this is a career-ending vote. And so their leadership presents them with the following proposition: Do the right thing and over the long run the power of our party will be stronger as the workers in roughly one-sixth of the U.S. economy will behave more like public employee union members.

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Last Updated on Friday, 19 March 2010 08:39

From R.G. Ratcliffe at the Houston Chronicle.

The U.S. Census forms arriving in Texans’ mailboxes next week will start the decennial dance over whether cities such as Houston or San Antonio get new seats in Congress through redistricting.

While the Census is nonpartisan, the redistricting process is highly political. How districts are drawn can determine whether they are competitive or are solidly Democratic or Republican.

Texas currently sends 20 Republicans and 12 Democrats to Congress. If the state gets four new seats, they likely will be split: two Republican and two Hispanic Democratic.

But the GOP also is likely to look for ways to reconfigure the districts of Democrats Chet Edwards of Waco and Lloyd Doggett of Austin to make it difficult for them to win re-election in 2012.

Experts’ early looks at Census estimates point to a potential new congressional district in northwest Harris County. That could be alluring to state Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, who represents the area in the Legislature.

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UPDATE:  R.G. Ratcliffe has updated his story and posted a map showing the population growth in Texas between 2000 and 2008.

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Last Updated on Friday, 12 March 2010 02:32

From John Wildermuth at Fox and Hounds Daily:

When it comes to redistricting, $2.7 million may trump $280,000.

The $2.7 million is what Charles Munger, a Palo Alto Republican, has anted up to qualify a “Son of Prop. 11” redistricting measure for the November ballot.

The initiative is simple enough. It allows the Citizens Redistricting Commission created by the 2008 initiative to also draw the lines for California’s congressional districts after this year’s census.

The $280,000, on the other hand, is what Democratic politicians and their allies have put aside for a November initiative that would kill Prop. 11 entirely, putting redistricting back in the hands of the Democrat-run Legislature.

Most of that money comes from California Democrats who are either in Congress or who want to be in Congress – that would be Karen Bass, who has given $50,000 to the initiative. But under Prop. 11, only legislative districts will be redrawn by the committee. Munger’s measure, though, would take redistricting out of the comforting hands of the Legislature and give it to a multi-partisan commission that won’t care nearly so much about putting more California Democrats in Congress.

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You can see the initiative here.

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Last Updated on Wednesday, 10 March 2010 05:42