As former U.S. Congressman Tom DeLay's money laundering trial moves forward in Travis County, members of the Texas Senate met for the first time Wednesday to start talking about redrawing district lines.

A rapidly growing state ultimately gets more representation, so, as 2010 census numbers get tallied, Texas could stand to gain more Congressional seats. This time around, state lawmakers are hoping advanced technology will help make the process more transparent.

Controversy still remains over the 2003 Congressional redistricting plan engineered by DeLay. DeLay faces criminal charges for laundering corporate money to Republican candidates in an election that gave the GOP the majority and control over district lines. Embittered House Democrats walked out of the Capitol when DeLay wanted to carve up Travis County's district lines.

"I'm hoping we can do everything possible to avoid a redistricting like in 2003. That was so controversial," Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, said.

Every 10 years, state lawmakers are faced with the daunting task of redrawing federal and state district lines. As such, 2010 census numbers will determine how many federal and state Congressional seats, as well as State Board of Education seats each region of Texas will get.

It's a partisan process, but lawmakers said a program called Red Appl, presented to them Wednesday, provides the opportunity to draft districts and get immediate voting pattern breakdowns, before lawmakers come to a final decision.

"Now the computer will do it for us. We can switch a city block with another city block and look at how it changes a map," Senate Select Committee on Redistricting Chair Sen. Kel Seliger said.

With a looming budget shortfall and redistricting on the table, Chairman Seliger said lawmakers probably won’t address as many bills as they did in the last session.

"People of Texas have a lot of law now. Do we need 7,000 more? No, but we need a budget. We have to do redistricting," he said.

Lawmakers said technology tools to redraw district lines also will be available to the public. Members of the Senate Committee on Redistricting also will begin traveling the state to hear from the public on drawing district lines. House panels have been doing so all summer.