I had a brief conversation earlier today with House redistricting chairman Burt Solomons. He agreed with what I wrote yesterday, which was that to pair Democrats in minority districts would violate the Voting Rights Act. Since the six Democrats in Dallas County are all either Hispanic (Anchia, Alonzo) or African-American (Davis, Mallory-Caraway, Johnson, Giddings), Republicans cannot pair Democrats without eliminating a minority seat. Theref0re, the two seats that Dallas County is expected to lose can only be Republican seats. Solomons confirmed that my post was right. Since a couple of commenters had written that the House maps were already drawn, I asked Solomons about that as well. He scoffed at the idea. The data from the Census Bureau hasn’t been around long enough for people to have drawn maps.