That’s the word from Dallas County in reply to my Texas Public Information Act request. Apparently, no official map of in what was then Justice of the Peace Precinct 7 exists for the boundaries used in the 1956 wet-dry election that turned Oak Cliff dry.
So what does that mean for the proposed Dallas wet-dry election? As noted, the location of the precinct could invalidate the results of the city-wide election in Oak Cliff, thanks to a confusing and convoluted state law. We ran a map of the boundaries that appeared in The Dallas Morning News during the 1956 election, but one of the state’s top liquor law attorneys told me yesterday that The Morning News map wouldn’t necessarily hold up under a legal challenge. The process to determine boundaries without an official map could be difficult and time-consuming, said Lou Bright, the former general counsel for the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission.
Given that, it may well be that Progress Dallas, the Kroger- and Walmart-backed group that is behind the petition drive and election, may decide to hold a concurrent election — as we also reported — just to be on the safe side. I contacted John Hatch with Texas Petition Strategies, who is running the wet-dry election for Progress Dallas, but I haven’t heard back from him yet.
