In Colorado, Congressman Mike Coffman (6th Congressional District) last week proposed amending Voting Rights Act provisions to allow more ballots to be printed in English only.
http://coffman.house.gov/...
And this week a redistricting plan unveiled by Democrats would increase the Latino population in his suburban Denver district from 9 percent to 22 percent.
Needless to say Coffman is not going to be happy with that! He wants those voters to just disappear and in fact he tried to make that happen in 2008 when he was Colorado secretary of state, but was blocked by the courts.
The state legislature was unable to come up with a redistricting plan this year so the matter is being settled by Denver District Court. Trial is set for October.
Latinos account for 42 percent of the state's population growth in the last 10 years (from 4.3 million people in 2000 to 5 million in 2010).
The Sixth Congressional District used to be represented by the notorious Tom Tancredo (yeah the "bomb Mecca" nut case) who retired in 2010.
Tancredo also opposed the Denver Public Library's purchase of Spanish language books. (Someone needs to get a life.)
Coffman, meanwhile, when he was Colorado's secretary of state, tried to block 6400 voter registrations on the grounds that the forms were incomplete in 2008. But a court allowed those voters to participate in the election anyway.
http://www.denverpost.com/...
Last week, Coffman announced he plans to introduce legislation to repeal portions of the 1973 voting act so ballots and other election materials would only have to be printed in English.
Coffman to Hispanics: I wish you didn't exist.
The Democratic Party's map would apparently create two safe Democratic districts and two safe Republican districts, with three more considered competitive.
Those competitive districts would each have about a 20 percent Hispanic population.
Needless to say that doesn't sit well with the GOP.
Currently 10 Colorado counties are required to print ballots in English and Spanish based on provisions of the 1973 voting rights act. That is likely to increase to 16 counties in 2012.
The Republicans of course wish those Hispanics would simply disappear.
Or if not, they'd like to consolidate as many of them as possible into one district.
So their alleged complaint is that the Democratic plan "dillutes" Hispanic votes by increasing their presence in some districts.
GOP attorney Richard Westfall said the Republican map creates only minimal changes to current boundaries so it doesn't disrupt Latinos.
Democrats, he said, created a "very significant and unnecessary dilution of existing Hispanic voting strength" in the 2nd District, represented by U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, a Boulder Democrat.
Gee how nice of them to not want to "disrupt" Hispanic voters by keeping their numbers as low as possible in as many congressional districts as possible.
Meanwhile the judge randomly chosen to hear the case used to work at the same firm as the Democratic Party's lawyer in the case.
So the Republicans are throwing a hissie fit over that, naturally.
http://www.denverpost.com/...
And two Latino activists groups are likely to join the case with their own proposed redistricting.
Somehow I don't think they will mind having greater Latino numbers in more congressional districts.