Thread: Census data scrutinized in Farmers Branch trial

Census data scrutinized in Farmers Branch trial
By PATRICK McGEEStar-Telegram Staff Writer
DALLAS -- Lawyers and voting experts spent hours debating census numbers Tuesday as the trial began in a lawsuit aimed at getting Hispanic representation on the Farmers Branch City Council by creating single-member districts.

Farmers Branch is a hot spot in the debate over illegal immigration because of the City Council's efforts to ban illegal immigrants from renting apartments in the city.

All five council members are elected at large, and Hispanic candidates who oppose the ban lost by wide margins in the last two elections.

On Tuesday, two former candidates, Jose Galvez and Ruben Rendon, watched as a team of attorneys, led by immigrant advocate Domingo Garcia, made their case to U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor. They argued that a western section of the city has enough Hispanic residents to merit its own district.

Garcia's law firm represents three Hispanic residents of Farmers Branch in the case, and called Richard Gambitta, director of the Institute for Law and Public Affairs at the University of Texas at San Antonio, as an expert witness.

Gambitta said election results showed that voters in Garcia's proposed district often voted for Hispanic candidates, including Lupe Valdez for Dallas County sheriff in 2004.

"The choice of the Hispanic community is the Hispanic candidate against the non-Hispanic candidate consistently," Gambitta said.

But Farmers Branch attorneys attacked Gambitta's conclusions that more than half of registered voters in the proposed district are Hispanic.

Bill Rives, a senior lecturer in finance at Ohio State University, said Gambitta was "really stretching" the data and was using a methodology that other experts do not use.

The trial is scheduled to continue today.

PATRICK McGEE, 817-685-3806
pmcgee@star-telegram.com





http://www.star-telegram.com/dallas_new ... 67327.html

if i understand the point here this is exactly what is going on in California. You have an apparent Hispanic majority population but in fact there is a significant illegal along with legal immigrant Hispanic population that it looks like they'd require their own district and that is what is happening - all based on false data like census data, which does not separate legal from illegal.