SCOTUS Sabotages the Texas Primary

It shouldn’t be of any surprise that the Supreme Court of the United States, the court that appointed George W. Bush to a second term as president, has served us up another pile of steaming manure by ruling that all redistricting maps in the state of Texas are null and void until they get a chance to rule on them.

On January 9^th 2012. Yep, that’s three weeks after the December 15 2011 filing deadline for the Texas Primary Election in March 2012.

Chaos ensues. How can one know if one resides in the state house or senate district that he or she is filing for? Or what about the congressional districts, especially when – next year – Texas has an additional 4 congressional seats.

The Supremes give no clue how Texas is to handle this very heavy-handed decision. Do we keep the presidential primary and hold another one for the state and local offices later on?

When is the filing deadline?

What does this all mean?

But if I were to guess, and I guess about stuff all the time, I would have to say that this puts a new look on the Republican Primary. The way things are going, it doesn’t appear to me that a presumptive nominee will emerge before the March primary, so keeping the Texas primary in March is all but certain. But if Texas is forced into having two primaries, the excitement of voting for the Republican nominee will be limited to just that race, state and local races won’t benefit from the higher poll numbers of a presidential year. This means that a later primary for the state and local offices will be as lackluster as a school board election. And we all know what happens when there is a low turnout.

The bat-guano crazies, unelectable any other time, all win in their primaries.

All of this, courtesy of Justice Antonin Scalia.