The vote comes a day after the Texas House approved the new map in an 88-52 party-line vote.
AUSTIN, Texas — A bill that would redraw Texas’ congressional map to potentially give Republicans as many as five new seats in the House of Representatives is one step closer to being signed into law.
The Texas Senate Committee on Redistricting on Thursday voted to present House Bill 4 to the full Senate with a favorable recommendation. It was a 5-3 vote with one absent.
The vote comes a day after the Texas House approved the new map in an 88-52 party-line vote.
The bill now heads to the full Senate for final approval. Should the full Senate pass the bill, it’ll head to Gov. Greg Abbot’s desk to be signed into law.
State Democrats have vowed to challenge the new map’s legality in court if it is passed into law.
The bill’s approval is also likely to prompt California’s Democratic-controlled state Legislature this week to approve of a new House map creating five new Democratic-leaning districts. But the California map would require voter approval in November.
Texas Republicans openly said they were acting in their party’s interest. State Rep. Todd Hunter, who wrote the legislation formally creating the new map, noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed politicians to redraw districts for nakedly partisan purposes.
“The underlying goal of this plan is straight forward: improve Republican political performance,” Hunter, a Republican, said on the floor. After nearly eight hours of debate, Hunter took the floor again to sum up the entire dispute as nothing more than a partisan fight. “What’s the difference, to the whole world listening? Republicans like it, and Democrats do not.”
Democrats said the disagreement was about more than partisanship.
“In a democracy, people choose their representatives,” State Rep. Chris Turner said. “This bill flips that on its head and lets politicians in Washington, D.C., choose their voters.”
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