Texas county defends plan to swap voting maps between primary and November election

A Texas county told the state Supreme Court it can change its voting maps between its primary and November general election — doubling down on what pro-voting plaintiffs warn could be replicated across the state to undermine the will of the voters.  

Whether Galveston County can switch out its district maps is not just a local dispute. A win for the county could embolden other Texas jurisdictions to tweak election maps after seeing primary results in order to boost partisan advantages in the general election.

However, Galveston argues it is well within its powers under the Texas Constitution to redraw district boundaries when and how it sees fit, admitting in its brief that the latest adjustment is an attempt to boost Republicans’ odds of winning their races.

“Practically, there are many reasons why a county’s commissioners may adopt changed precinct boundaries between a primary and general election,” the county argued in a new response filed Monday. “They may want to increase partisan performance (as here), address new laws, or comply with population requirements.”

Pro-voting plaintiffs filed an emergency petition last week asking the Texas Supreme Court to block the 11th-hour map switch, arguing the Texas Election Code requires that a political party’s nominees for a county general election be selected by a primary election.

Galveston County’s local maps have been at the center of a years-long redistricting legal battle. Pro-voting plaintiffs are still fighting to block a GOP gerrymander that was struck down in 2023 by U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey Brown, who was appointed by President Donald Trump. The decision was later reversed by the ultra-conservative Fifth Circuit, and some of the claims are still being litigated in the district court.

On Friday, Brown, who was weighing a request to end what is left of that prior federal case, called the timing of Galveston County’s map swap “highly suspicious.”

Ironically, Brown also noted that GOP officials didn’t do a particularly good job at redrawing the map for partisan gain.

“If the defendants really cared about improving Republican partisan performance, they would have changed the 2021 map before the primary election to encourage a Republican to run for Justice of the Peace in that now Republican-leaning precinct in 2026,” Brown added.

Galveston’s latest map update came shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority gutted the historic Voting Rights Act in April, signaling a new federal legal environment that now welcomes racial gerrymandering and encourages the dismantling of districts where minority voters have been able to elect the candidates of their choice. 

Galveston County is represented by Galveston-based Greer, Herz & Adams LLP and the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a leading anti-voting law firm based in Washington D.C., that files voter roll purge cases across the country. The firm also oversaw last year’s mid-decade GOP gerrymander that targeted minority voters in Tarrant County, a major partisan battleground in Texas.

Galveston County officials weren’t the only ones who made changes after that ruling — multiple Southern states raced to pass new gerrymanders this summer for the 2026 election. However, notably, Mississippi Republicans held off on redrawing maps because the state had already conducted its primaries in March, the week after Texas held its primaries. 

Unlike in Mississippi, Galveston County officials took a different approach: They simply do not care that they already held their 2026 primary elections in March. They passed new maps in June anyway, which they argue they can use in this year’s November elections.

In its latest filing, Galveston County is asking the Texas Supreme Court to deny pro-voting plaintiffs’ petition to block the new maps for the November general election, arguing that nothing in state law explicitly prohibits the county from changing the districts at the last minute.

The county did not offer any comparable example of a court allowing officials to switch a voting map after the primary. 

The county also argued that the Texas Supreme Court should reject the petition on the grounds that the plaintiffs should have sought an injunction in district court, rather than immediately escalating the matter to the state’s highest court.