LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Dear Editor, On Tuesday, Hays County Commissioners Court is expected to act on an agenda item that, to most residents, probably seems like “inside baseball.” It’s a very technical issue that, on its surface, doesn’t seem to have much of an effect on their everyday lives. But it’s important. And there’s a story behind it.
The issue? The redistricting of Hays County’s voting precincts. Voting precincts are the most basic unit of political organization, and constitute the building blocks of most other electoral jurisdictions. We currently have 87 of them in Hays County. A precinct can be as small as part of a neighborhood or subdivision to multiple neighborhoods, subdivisions, or apartment complexes — provided its size does not exceed 5,000 registered voters.
Generally, widespread precinct redistricting occurs only after each United States census — every 10 years — when the Constitutionally required redistricting of the House of Representatives takes place. Occasionally, the County institutes limited precinct changes outside of the 10-year cycle, when development and population growth push the size of a precinct up against — or beyond — the 5,000-voter limit. In Hays County, we saw some limited precinct splits and mergers in 2023, in response to growth since the censusbased redistricting and to prepare for the pace of future growth.
The decision the Hays County Judge and County Commissioners are facing this week is not being driven by demographic changes in one of the fastest growing counties in the nation. Rather, the proposed precinct changes are the downstream result of a cynical political maneuver dictated by Donald Trump and implemented with a brisk salute and a “Yes, sir!” by Governor Greg Abbott who then played “Simon Says” with the unquestioning Republican majority in the Texas legislature.
Trump, from all reports, was reading the multiple polls showing that the 2026 midterm elections will likely result in the United States House of Representatives doing an about face, moving from a Republican to a Democratic majority. So he came up with a plan to try to stop it. He told Abbott to do what he had to do to make sure Texas picks up an additional five House seats — Republican House seats — in next year’s election. (And Abbott wasn’t the only governor who received similar marching orders.) That’s what the legislature’s quorum clash was all about in Austin during the summer.
Props, here, to State Representative Erin Zwiener for fighting the good fight and standing up for the people she represents, unlike those who tried to silence our voices by changing the rules of representation in the middle of the game.
So Trump got his five seats, and Hays County, among others, was caught in the middle. To get the five seats he was expected to deliver, Abbott and his henchmen and henchwomen (henchpeople?) in the Legislature took a meat axe and swung it with all their might.
When the dust cleared, Hays County’s congressional map looked very different than it did the day before. The Hays portion of CD-35, traditionally Democratic, was put on a stretcher and carried out of the game. CD-21, long a Republican stronghold, remains one, though with slightly different borders. It, along with CD-27, another deep red district, one that swooped into Hays from a galaxy far, far away, picked apart and shared the bones of what is soon to be the old CD-35 in Hays County.
Now what does that have to do with voting precincts? Well, the state cartographers who drew the new congressional district maps, like a sloppy utility crew or a surgeon whose diploma came from a medical school that advertised on a matchbook cover, didn’t take the time to learn what was underneath before they brought in the backhoe and started digging.
To draw the new Hays County congressional districts, which kick into place for the 2026 elections, they whacked through a dozen voting precincts — turning 12 of them into 24. While they could have worked around the precinct borders, it was easier and quicker just to chop each of them in two, brush their hands, walk off, and call it a day.
That created a problem. The Texas Election Code prohibits any voting precinct from containing turf from more than one Congressional District, one State Senate District, one State House District, one Commissioners Court Precinct, one Justice of the Peace Precinct, or one State Board of Education District. This exercise would have been a breeze if those jurisdictions were the same size, the same shape, and occupied the same geography as the 12 precincts that got whacked.
But, no, they weren’t like a cake that, with a steady hand and a sharp knife, could simply be cut into identical pieces through each layer. The different jurisdictions are of different sizes, different shapes, and different mixes of precincts, each figuratively stacked on top of one another. But the congressional redistricting crew didn’t know that, didn’t care, or decided to leave it to someone else to clean up the mess they created after hacking through the top layer. While they avoided the problem of any one precinct containing parts of more than one congressional district, the same wasn’t true of the other jurisdictions that suffered the fallout from the congressional redistricting.
It was up to the folks at Hays County Development Services and the Hays County Elections Office to jump in, and jump in quickly, since time is of the essence. The filing period for precinct chair candidates in the March 2026 Primary elections opened on September 9 and closes in about six weeks. Precinct Chairs are among the most hardworking and undersung party officials, responsible for registering new voters, getting the vote out, sharing party and election information, and helping plan and execute candidates’ campaigns in their precincts.
In filing for a place on the ballot in the primary elections, precinct chair candidates must file for their precincts as they will exist in January, not as they exist today. Similarly, candidates for public office must know which precincts will constitute their districts as we move into the 2026 election year. We are fortunate to have county departments and department heads who understand the urgency of making the legally necessary adjustments after the purely self-serving political decision made by the White House and State House in an attempt to block the will of the people at the ballot box.
Ironically, filtering last November’s Hays County Congressional election results through the lens of the proposed new precincts, both Democratic candidates would have prevailed in Hays County, rather than one winning and one losing — although the change would have had little or no effect on the ultimate district outcomes.
When first faced with this issue two weeks ago, Commissioners Court tabled it until this week’s meeting to better understand its history and dynamics. And while the pressures of a tight calendar appear to make it impossible to go back to the drawing board in time for the March Primary Elections, the members of Commissioners Court, and the voters of San Marcos and Hays County voters deserve this explanation about who is responsible for this change and the resulting voter and candidate confusion.
Sincerely, Jon Leonard San Marcos
