Analysis: In Voting Rights, Who's a Person?

The 36 congressional districts in Texas each had 698,488 people in them when they were drawn. That seeming exactitude hides big differences. The 17th Congressional District, represented by Bill Flores, R-Bryan, has the same number of people in it as the 33rd, represented by Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth. But Flores' district has 532,324 adults — 62,868 more than Veasey's. That means there are more children in the Veasey district than in the Flores district. But the little ones are not the only ineligible voters.

Veasey's district also happens to have the smallest number of people who are allowed to vote — 305,120 — a number that excludes non-citizens as well as children. More than half of the people in his district are ineligible to vote. On the other end of the scale, the biggest citizen voting-age population is represented by Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio; his 21st Congressional District has 489,820 such people.

Each district is the same size, but 70.1 percent of Smith's residents can vote and only 43.7 percent of Veasey's are eligible. In a perfect election with 100 percent turnout among people eligible to vote, the voters in Veasey's district would have proportionately more power. It would take fewer of them to put someone in Congress than it would take in Smith's district. That said, each of the winners in those two districts would go to Washington, D.C., to represent the same number of people.