The U.S. Census Bureau this month started releasing 2010 Census population local level totals, including 2010 Census data on race, Hispanic origin and voting age for multiple geographies within each state.

The U.S. Census bureau today delivered Texas’ 2010 census local population totals, including first look at race and Hispanic origin data for legislative redistricting.

The Census Bureau will continue to deliver the local level data state-by-state on a rolling basis through March.

The decennial census for Texas totaled 25,145,561 people living in the state in the first half of 2010 for a 20.6% increase over the number of people living in the state in 2000, courtesy of the burgeoning Texas Hispanic and black populations.

The local level data released today will serve as the starting point for a lengthy political and legal battle over how to redraw the political boundaries around Texas. (Census data release | Texas redistricting information)

The Texas Legislative Council, which handles the mechanics of redistricting for the Legislature, will make the detailed census data available for download to Texas lawmakers’ computers in the coming days. Lawmakers can than begin to draw new district lines using redistricting software applications already provide by the legislative council. In recent weeks, lawmakers and their staff have been learning how to use the software using old census data.

A fair redrawing of new district lines must allow the minority groups, whose growth created the 20.6% population increase, the opportunity to choose their U.S. House and state legislative representatives. The Texas Hispanic or Latino population increased by 41.8 percent and African-American population increased by 23.9 percent, entitling those population groups to share in the 4 additional U.S. House Texas earned by Texas’ overall population increase.

When the legislature completes its redistricting task Texas will have 36 rather than 32 seats in the reconfigured 435-member U.S. House of Representatives. The U.S. House Texas delegation currently stands at 23 Republicans and 9 Democrats.

Based on the 2010 Census count of 25,145,561 people now living in Texas, the ideal population count for each of the 36 Texas congressional districts is 701,901, the ideal Senate district is 811,147, the ideal state House district is 167,637, and the ideal State Board of Education district is 1,676,371.

Should the Republican-dominated Texas Legislature gerrymander the new districts to disenfranchise the larger minority populations, the gerrymandered congressional map would likely be challenged by the Obama Administration Justice Department, which under the Voting Rights Act must approve any changes affecting minority representation.

Given Collin County’s 62.8 percent population growth from 491,675 residents in 2000 to 782,341 residents in 2010, it seem likely the county will see some adjustment to some or all of the various district lines, including for the Congressional, Texas House, Texas Senate and State Board of Education districts.

It is, however, unlikely that Collin County will see a new congressional district or other major changes in the various district lines that crisscross over the county.

Collin Co. ranks seventh in population size after Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Bexar, Travis and El Paso Counties. The county also has a substantial percentage of residents with Hispanic, Asian, and African American heritage. (U.S. Census Bureau 2010 Custom tables Excel)

Collin County currently holds most of Texas Congressional District 3, represented by Republican Sam Johnson since he first won election in 1991. The 3rd congressional district includes the county’s densely populated southwest quadrant and a small corner of northern Dallas county.

The remaining three quarters of Collin County’s more sparsely populated geographic area is included in Texas Congressional District 4, currently represented by Republican Ralph Hall. Hall’s District 4 geographic area includes all or parts of Bowie, Camp, Cass, Collin, Delta, Fannin, Farnklin, Grayson, Hopkins, Hunt, Lamar, Morris, Rains, Red River and Rockwall counties.

Other districts in Collin Co. include State Senate Districts 8 and 30, State House Districts 66, 67, 70 and 89, and State Board of Education Districts 9 and 12.

Click on a blue state in the map tool below to view county level Census data. Data for states shaded gray have not yet been released. The Census Bureau will deliver state data on a rolling basis through March. See what states are coming next.

Additional Data: To access data from multiple geographies within the state, such as census blocks, tracts, voting districts, cities, counties and school districts, visit American Factfinder: http://factfinder2.census.gov.

Democratic Blog of Collin County – News

2010 was a roller coaster year for the Green Party. Mid-term elections proved voter dissatisfaction with the Democrats in power, but the media-darling Tea Party Movement drove voters to reactionary candidates, not helping Greens at the polls. International Greens saw successes in the United Kingdom, Australia, and other places, while US Greens were moved by [...]
Green Party Watch

Dear Friend of Liberty,

“This is the last Monday Message of 2010, and I thought I would take the opportunity to mention a few of the things our party has achieved this year.

• Over 800 Libertarians ran as candidates in the November 2 election. (That’s up from about 600 in 2008 and also about 600 in 2006.) Our candidates got over 15 million votes total, and our candidates for U.S. House got over 1 million votes.
• Throughout the year, at least 38 Libertarians were elected or re-elected to public office. Our list of elected Libertarians grew from 146 to 154.
• We passed our goal of 5,000 in online contributions. The current up-to-the-minute total is on our home page.
• Our total fundraising this year is significantly greater than last year, and also greater than 2006, the previous mid-term election year.
• We started a program to distribute inexpensive Libertarian bumper stickers, door hangers, and T-shirts. We got orders for about 170,000 bumper stickers, about 650,000 door hangers, and over 1,000 T-shirts.
• Our monthly pledge total increased from about ,000 per month to over ,000 per month.
• Our Facebook fan count exploded from about 20,000 fans to over 134,000 fans.

Thanks to all our donors, candidates and volunteers for making 2010 a great year.

Please support the Libertarian Party and help make 2011 an even greater year!”

Sincerely,

Wes Benedict
Executive Director
Libertarian National Committee

Source:http://www.lp.org/blogs/staff/lp-monday-message-2010-recap

Independent Political Report

by JOELLE RIDDLE

Election Day November 2, 2010, turned out to be a very personal experience for me. I knew that this day more than any other would be the beginning of the end as far as my current capacity to serve as an elected official.

It was clear several months ago that I was not going to be on the ballot, having discovered the inequities in Colorado law immediately after changing my affiliation from Democrat to independent (or unaffiliated). It was further affirmed I wasn’t going to be on the ballot after a federal court judge ruled that there would be no changes to the rules set in place by the parties to blatantly advance their candidates and discourage others.

I knew it, but on Election Day I felt it.

Being on the “inside” allowed me to experience the consequences of a broken system and how it fails the people and the issues that are most important to us on a regular basis, day after frustrating day. Until the system changes we won’t have qualified candidates, we won’t solve problems and we won’t regain the public trust. 

It was sobering in a way that I hadn’t imagined as I looked at the list of candidates on the ballot and didn’t see my name, as I had four years earlier. To not win an election is one thing, but to be prevented from even running is another — very frustrating — experience all together.

Although I experienced this intense feeling of injustice and frustration (as most independents do at one time or another, I imagine) it was juxtaposed with a very deep sense of relief, a relief that I would no longer have to work within a broken, dysfunctional system. The effects of our partisan politics are felt at every level, and if you are someone that thinks it only affects our elected officials in DC, then think again—it’s thought, felt and ingrained into all levels of our political process, even in our small rural communities, and that’s exactly where we need to start the reform.

I spent the last four years learning and understanding countless processes, participating in numerous local and state boards to advocate for my community, studied issues I had never even heard of prior to taking office. I built relationships based on trust in order to continue to do the best job I could for my community. And really all of that didn’t amount to much in the end as far as the “system” was concerned. Everything boiled down to the fact that I didn’t want to play for just one team; I wanted to work for all of the people, with no biased party labels or preconceived notions. For me it was a natural evolution and a product of my observations and learning.

Being on the “inside” allowed me to experience the consequences of a broken system and how it fails the people and the issues that are most important to us on a regular basis, day after frustrating day. Until the system changes we won’t have qualified candidates, we won’t solve problems and we won’t regain the public trust.

I knew when I made the decision to become an independent that there would be consequences, some rather predictable and others I couldn’t have imagined.

One thing was for certain, independence was the only way forward that would allow me to do the best job I could for the people I was elected to represent.

I have never regretted that decision and it has proven to not only affirm my passion for democracy, it has elevated it to a level that will inspire my work as a grassroots organizer for “Independent Voters for Colorado”.

Although I wasn’t re-elected to office, I know that my commitment to the people in my community is deeper and I am even more determined to help change our government. In the future I want to contribute to a more authentic expression of our democracy; a productive political process and not just a power game for political parties who seem to be concerned for their own “win” as opposed to genuine gains for those whom they purport to serve. I would venture to say that my next Election Day report won’t be fraught with so much frustration, but more of a sense of accomplishment in working with other independents to organize and demand a better democratic process.

Happy Holidays,
Joelle

Joelle Riddle can be reached at info@indiesforcolorado.org or call (970) 799-3720

The Hankster

California Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado received a 2010 Anti-Corruption Award from NYC Independence Party Sunday afternoon at the Tribeca Grill. Maldonado, introduced at the event by independentvoting.org president Jackie Salit, was responsible for putting top two open primary initiative Proposition 14 on the ballot this year in California. Prop 14 was passed with 60% of the vote and allows 3.4 million independent and decline-to-state voters in the state to vote in primaries. Lt. Gov. Maldonado will be speaking this afternoon at the No Labels launch in NYC (see livestream here)

UPDATED: Richard Winger (Ballot Access News) just called in with a correction. Prop 14 passed with 53.73% of the vote. Thanks, Rich!

The Hankster

Posted by Darcy Richardson at Uncovered Politics:

ST. LOUIS, Nov. 4 — According to the Associated Press, 90 million Americans — only 42% of registered voters — pulled the lever for a congressional candidate on Tuesday. That’s just a hair under 29% of the US population of 310.6 million.

“So much for the consent of the governed,” says Thomas L. Knapp of the fledgling X2012 Project. “In a typical district, the next US Representative was chosen by, at most, one out of four or five registered voters and less than one in six of his or her alleged constituents.”

“A majority of those who could have voted refused to. A supermajority either chose not to vote or weren’t allowed to vote,” says the edgy and contemplative media coordinator and senior news analyst for the Center for a Stateless Society. “Yet for the next two years, that politician will claim to ‘represent,’ and to possess legitimate authority to rule, all of them.”

The X2012 Project, which hopes to build grassroots support for a massive boycott of the 2012 general election, aims to put the lie to those claims. Launched as the polls closed on Tuesday evening, X2012 is a “branding campaign” which allows non-voters to dispute the conventional wisdom that their abstention is rooted in apathy or that it constitutes implicit consent to the existing system of government.

By the time 2012 rolls around, the project hopes to have millions of non-voters on the record as non-consenting.

A July Rasmussen poll found that only 23% of Americans believe the US government functions with “the consent of the governed” — the criterion of legitimacy set forth by America’s founders in the Declaration of Independence.

“Thomas Jefferson didn’t say ‘a majority of the governed,’” says Knapp, a longtime third-party activist who ran for vice president on the nascent Boston Tea Party in 2008 while simultaneously garnering 8,628 votes as the Libertarian Party’s nominee for Congress in Missouri’s 2nd congressional district.

”Even a significant minority of dissenters calls the legitimacy of a government into question,” says Knapp. ”Some estimates say that fewer than one third of Americans supported the Revolution at its beginning. We’ve got a better case against John Boehner, Harry Reid and Barack Obama than Tom Paine had against George III.”

Darcy G. Richardson is the author of six books, including five volumes of a planned seven-volume history on independent and third-party politics in the United States.

Independent Political Report

Democrats and Republicans, unsurprisingly, saw the results of Tuesday’s election in starkly different terms. Conservatives were more likely to see in the GOP wave a new mandate to govern from the right. The top Senate Democrat, however, read the message from voters as a greater need for lawmakers from both sides to work more closely together.

The GOP, as expected, won well more than enough seats to recapture control of the House of Representatives but fell short of taking a majority in the Senate. It was the first time since 1930 that a party recaptured one chamber without also taking the other.

Republicans defeated younger Democrats and veterans, alike. Such was the case in Virginia, where Reps. Tom Perriello, a freshman; and Rick Boucher, a powerful subcommittee chairman first elected in 1982, both fell to GOP challengers.

The election will end Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s four-year reign as House speaker, and likely will bring Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) in her place.

Republican activist Gary Bauer trumpeted the election as a “referendum on [President] Obama, and the voters have rejected his agenda.”

“There is no spinning the results: The 2010 election is a referendum on Obama and the voters have rejected his agenda of failed stimulus bills, cap and trade energy taxes, government takeovers, union bailouts and socialized medicine,” says Bauer, a former GOP presidential candidate.

“The voters also sent a clear message about what they expect from Washington. By voting for conservative candidates, they are demanding fiscal responsibility, smaller government and more respect for traditional values,” Bauer adds.

But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who survived his own Election Day battle with tea party favorite Sharron Angle, read the mandate differently.

“The midterm elections that just passed were not about political parties and partisan scorekeeping. They were about you: your families, your jobs, your economic security and your future,” says Reid, who will lead a shrunken Democratic majority when the new Congress convenes in January.

“The message that you sent to Washington is that you want Democrats, Republicans and Independents to work together to find the common ground needed for real solutions and real progress. Democrats agree,” Reid says in an “open letter to the American people” posted on the Senate Democratic website. “We understand the frustration felt by all Americans — especially our middle class. We heard you, loud and clear. We’re frustrated too and will continue to fight for what you demand and deserve.”

Voters cited the poor economy and high unemployment as top concerns. Most of those who said they were “very worried” about the economy swung to support GOP House candidates.

Reid pledges Democrats will continue to stand up to “big banks, big oil, those who want to privatize Social Security and other powerful special interests are prevented from taking advantage of you.”

The Nevadan, who was elected to a fifth term, says the GOP takeover of the House means Republicans will now share a greater responsibility for governing — obstruction now longer will suffice.

“And with Republicans securing more seats in both houses of Congress, it is imperative they take their responsibility to offer bipartisan solutions more seriously. Simply saying ‘no’ will do nothing to create more jobs and strengthen our economy,” Reid says.

The publisher of the news site On The Hill, Scott Nance has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade.

The Democratic Daily

Sent to contact.ipr@gmail.com:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ATLANTA – The 2010 election did not result in any newly-elected Libertarians, however the Libertarian Party of Georgia is happy with the results. With nearly 1 million votes earned cumulatively by the first full slate of statewide candidates in the party’s history, the most important aspect of Tuesday’s results are the growth in support the Libertarian Party has seen in Georgia. Experiencing a 30% increase in membership since the beginning of 2010, many in the leadership of the Libertarian Party of Georgia expected big things on Election Day. On Tuesday evening, the Party’s candidates reached and set many milestones and records.

The most important milestone achieved Tuesday was the retention of ballot access for all statewide offices for the next election cycle. State School Superintendent candidate Kira Willis was the first of all ten candidates to cross the threshold of receiving votes from enough voters to equal one percent of registered voters statewide. She was quickly followed by Secretary of State candidate David Chastain and gubernatorial candidate John Monds.

“Retention of ballot access for the Libertarian Party of Georgia is a milestone many take for granted,” said Operations Director Brett Bittner. “However, operating under the most draconian ballot access laws in the nation here in Georgia, we understand the importance of providing Georgians with a choice at the ballot box, and we will continue to work to offer that choice to an ever-increasing number of Georgians. With a little help from the General Assembly, we should be able to field many candidates to oppose the one hundred or so candidates that ran unopposed this cycle.”

John Monds, a candidate accustomed to making history, became the first gubernatorial candidate in Party history to eclipse the 100,000 vote mark while also setting the record for highest percentage of the vote as well with 4.0%, besting Garrett Michael Hayes’ vote total in 2006 by 26%. Joining Mr. Monds in setting the office record and percent of vote were Secretary of State candidate David Chastain, Agriculture Commissioner candidate Kevin Cherry, and Insurance Commissioner candidate Shane Bruce. Election night’s highest vote-getter came from political newcomer and State School Superintendent candidate, Kira Willis, as she earned a total just shy of 125,000 votes in her bid for office. Other notable campaigns include Lieutenant Governor candidate Dan Barber, Attorney General candidate Don Smart, and Labor Commissioner candidate Will Costa, all of whom set the records highest vote totals for their respective races. Public Service Commissioner – District 2 candidate Jim Sendelbach set the record for highest vote percentage for that post.

“The most important thing we can take away from these election results is the growth we have seen over prior cycles,” offered Daniel N. Adams, chairman of the Libertarian Party of Georgia. “To see growth across the board in terms of the number of new Libertarian voters is encouraging, and it gives us a base with which to move forward.”

The Libertarian Party is Georgia’s third largest political party and the only party in Georgia promoting fewer taxes, less government and personal liberty for all Georgians. To learn more, please visit www.LPGeorgia.com

Independent Political Report

Democratic Blog of Collin County – News

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