Ken Nelson

I know everybody has been linking to video of Sheila Jackson Lee’s rudely taking cell phone calls during questions at her town hall:

But nobody that I’m aware of has wondered why she could be so tone deaf.

She doesn’t have to fight for her seat. Check out the map:

Her crazy convoluted district is carved out to find every black voter in the Houston area.

So she doesn’t have to compete for or even pretend to pay attention to the mostly white voters that showed up at the town hall.

This is an area where computers have not helped Democracy. Geographic Information Systems let state district builders carve out door by door, block by block districts based on race and voter registration information.