Cartoon #223: “Tom Delay’s Redistricting Map”

Almost two years after it was written, a secret memo, dated December 12, 2003, was turned over to the Washington Post regarding the Texas redistricting map rammed through the state legislature by Tom DeLay. The 73-page memo detailed an opinion by the voting rights section of the Department of Justice that the map violated the Voting Rights Act. The memo was never seen by the three-judge panel that ruled the map was legal in 2003. At the time the memo surfaced, the case was pending for review by the U.S. Supreme Court. The court’s decision came on June 28, 2006. The state legislature’s redistricting plan did indeed violate the Voting Rights Act in the case of House District 23, represented by Republican Henry Bonilla.

For those of you who followed my cartoons on this subject two years ago, you may recognize this as similar to my 2003 cartoon, “GOP Redistricting Map for Texas.” Tom DeLay’s name was not a national household word back then, and the image becomes more prophetic as we learn more about the corruption behind the Texas redistricting fiasco of 2003.