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What the heck does CVAP mean and why should you care?

Well, it stands for the estimated “citizen voting age population,” and its acronym is something that attorneys on both sides of the voting rights lawsuit against the Irving school district have been throwing around a lot.

Why? Well you can check out my story on the first day of the voting rights case proceedings. Since so many Hispanics in Irving are immigrants and children under the age of 18–both groups unable to vote–there’s debate over whether there are enough adult U.S. citizen Latinos to form a majority Hispanic voting district.

Attorneys for Manuel Benavidez, who’s challenging the district, say they can draw three districts where Hispanics would make up the majority of potential voters. They’re using projections based on the 2000 U.S. Census and the 2007 American Community Survey. They say that as more younger Hispanics age the “CVAP” numbers are increasing.

But attorneys for the school district argue that the survey only polled a small sample of people in Irving and therefore has a margin of error that means the numbers aren’t totally accurate. They think immigrants unable to vote still make up a large portion of the proposed districts.

This is what makes it more challenging to argue a voting rights case dealing with Hispanics than one dealing with African-American voters who don’t have an immigrant background.

So here we are just months before the start of the 2010 Census and the real question is–what will we learn about how much the city has changed since the last Census?

What we do know is that 69 percent of Irving ISD students are Latino (but again those are kids unable to vote, and many of their parents are immigrants). And one day, those kids will reach 18.

Of course, a judge already has found in favor of Benavidez in his case against the city, so there is a precedent set already. But remember, there’s a different judge deciding this case.

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