Blame our legislators for election mess

Eagle Editorial Board

Texas will be holding primary elections sometime this spring, but when still is up in the air. On Friday -- a year to the day before the next presidential inauguration -- the U.S. Supreme Court threw out congressional and legislative district maps drawn by a three-member federal court in San Antonio.

That court had drawn the maps in response to a lawsuit saying the map drawn last year by the Texas Legislature violated voting rights of minorities.

The Supreme Court ruling doesn't mean that the Legislature's maps will be used. Rather, the high court said the San Antonio judges deviated too much from the legislative map, even in districts where minority voting rights are not an issue.

So, the case returns to the San Antonio court, where the justices can accept the Legislature's map or redraw district boundaries in those districts where minority voting rights are in question.

Already the state primaries were moved from March to April 3 because of the dispute.

If district boundaries are not finalized by Feb. 1, state officials say, the primary date will have to be moved yet again. That would mean, the officials say, that the presidential nomination process would effectively be over by the time Texans vote.

That may be, but that is not the biggest issue here.

We don't like courts getting involved in matters best left to elected lawmakers. That's not the way the system is supposed to work.

And yet, time and again, the courts do get involved because they are forced to by a dysfunctional Legislature that does its best to avoid making tough but fair decisions.

Simply put, Texas is run by court degree rather than legislative intent. The only way to stop that is for our elected state lawmakers to put aside their damaging partisan politics and start acting in the best interest of all Texans.

When conditions in the state's prisons proved too much even for the toughest of Texans, it wasn't the Legislature that moved to correct the problem. Instead, it was the federal courts that ordered needed fixes.

When the state refused to meet its constitutional obligation to educate all the children of Texas, the courts once again stepped in to address the problem. Of course, lawmakers have yet to come up with a way to educate every child fairly and equally.

So, once again, the issue of school finance is before the courts and school districts across the state are left unsure of how much money they will have to spend in the coming years.

There have been lawsuits over care for those with mental health issues, suits about the state's transportation plan and numerous others.

The suit over the state's congressional and legislative districts didn't have to happen, but now all of us are suffering from election uncertainty because our elected lawmakers utterly failed in their job.

When Texans pick their representatives, party affiliation matters, to be sure. We expect Republicans to vote a certain way, and Democrats to vote another way.

But we also expect them to represent all of us, regardless of party, race, income, faith or other factors that make us who we are.

Had the Legislature been willing to follow federal law and taken minority voting rights into account when they drew district boundaries, we wouldn't be facing the uncertainty we now do.

The blame for this mess doesn't go to the courts.

Rather, it goes to the lawmakers we send to Austin who are too busy playing political games to do what is right for Texas and for all Texans.