Copy and paste the link below, to access and stream the movie The Big Buy: How Tom Delay Stole Congress, free online. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6rzv (Links to an external site.)
ADDITIONAL LINK IF NEEDED https://vimeo.com/235850615 (Links to an external site.)
Choose from one of the prompts below, to respond to
1. Thinking about federalism and the how power is distributed between multiple levels of government, including the federal and state level, identify current federal and Texas laws that regulate elections, such as those that provide for determining electoral processes, eligibility to participate in an election, selection methods, winning requirements, candidate qualifications, determining when and where election is held. Discuss inconsistencies and provide some possible examples to explain the potential effects these could have on electoral outcomes, of who is deemed winner, and ultimately achieving democratic representation of the appropriate people (constituents) who will be electorally linked and impacted by the winner of a political office.
2. In your own opinion, is re-redistricting, before the decennial census, a crime, based on statutory and constitutional law? Or, given the nature and number of state level elections, across a wide geography made up of an extremely demographically heterogenous population, make it democratically necessary that re-mapping between census’s be a reserved power of the states, in order to maximize representative democracy. How could the remapping of Texas be applied to example and explain the state’s Don’t Mess With Texas, age old attitude, and individualistic political culture.
3. How could you defend an argument that re-redistricting was not illegal, and how could you defend the argument that re-redistricting violated the Voting Rights Act. Despite, the Texas remapping controversy, should the federal judicial system be involved, in what Justice Felix Frankfurter called the “political thicket” of partisan redistricting? Especially, since the power to redistrict is a power reserved to for the state, and its people. If political gerrymandering is a problem, should its resolve be left to the voters, state by state, and jurisdiction by jurisdiction, or to the federal government (i.e. oversight, regulation, intervention, law…what do you think).
