Good morning, 

Here is today's Texas Minute.

– Brandon Waltens 

Monday, September 13, 2021
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• With candidates already having announced campaigns for 2022, many of y’all have reached out to ask “when will the primary elections take place?”
   
• The answer is…it depends.

• The reason goes back to redistricting. Every decade, Austin lawmakers engage in the contentious process of redrawing representative district boundaries based on demographic information provided by the federal decennial Census. These districts span the federal to state levels and include the jurisdictions of state senators, state representatives, and U.S. representatives.
   
• The Texas Legislature has a specified number of seats, which include 31 state Senate districts and 150 state House districts, meaning that the boundaries of the districts will change, but not the total number of state lawmakers.

  U.S. congressional representation is different. The number of allotted congressional districts changes based on Texas’ share of the overall U.S. population. This decade that number has increased from 36 to 38 districts.

• Normally this process would have taken place during the regular session earlier this year. However, COVID-related delays from the census bureau meant that lawmakers didn’t receive the data needed to draw the maps until late summer.

• Lawmakers are slated to tackle redistricting during the third special session, which will convene on September 20. That process is often contentious, however, and could span into additional special sessions. So what does that mean for the primary elections? 
   

• During the second special legislative session, Texas lawmakers passed a plan to reschedule next year’s primary elections depending on when new district maps are approved.
   

• Senate Bill 13, signed by the governor last weeek, sets new dates for the 2022 primary candidate filing period, election, and runoff, based on when a redistricting plan adopted by the Legislature becomes law:

   

• If new maps are done by November 15, 2021
  Candidate Filing: November 29-December 13, 2021
  Primary Election: March 1, 2022
  Primary Runoff: May 24, 2022
   

• If new maps are done by November 16-December 28, 2021
  Candidate Filing: January 10-24, 2022
  Primary Election: April 5, 2022
  Primary Runoff: June 21, 2022
   

• If new maps are done by December 29, 2021-February 7, 2022
  Candidate Filing: February 21-March 7, 2022
  Primary Election: May 24, 2022
  Primary Runoff: July 26, 2022

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