QuoteFlorida starts lengthy, contested process to redraw state's political maps
By Mary Ellen Klas, Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau
Posted: Jun 17, 2011 08:44 PM
TALLAHASSEE â€" Florida legislators begin three months of public hearings Monday to hear what voters have to say about their once-a-decade task of realigning the state's political maps to reflect shifts in population and growth.
Known as reapportionment of the population, and redistricting of legislative and congressional seats, it is an exercise like no other in state government.
Redistricting is raw politics to the core â€" often fostering unusual alliances of ideologically opposite legislators whose goal is to preserve their own political careers and broaden their party's power.
It will be driven by technology, with new software and databases that allow lawmakers to determine the voting patterns of every block and enable public inspection of every map.
It will inevitably erupt into a legal battle, as new redistricting rules imposed by nearly 63 percent of voters in the 2010 election attempt to ban the protection of incumbents and shield minority voting rights but leave more potential trip wires than ever before.
And it will shape Florida history. While a fraction of voters may turn out for a general election and dictate state politics for two to four years, redistricting forces politicians to hit the reset button and that can leave a political imprint for decades.
"We are starting with a blank slate,'' House Redistricting Chairman Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, told a Tallahassee radio station this month. "It is a pain. It's a lot of work but I think it's very important. What you're really doing is making sure everyone's vote is valued."
The House and Senate redistricting committees will begin their so-call "listening tour" of 26 cities in Tallahassee Monday with some basic facts:
• Florida grew from 15.98 million in 2000 to 18.8 million in 2010, enough to reward the state with two new congressional districts â€" a total of 27.
• The rebalancing of population will mean that the "ideal" sized congressional district will grow from 639,000 people to 696,000. The 40 districts in the state Senate will grow in population from 399,000 to 470,000, and the 120 state House seats will expand from 133,000 to 157,000.
Lawmakers want people to bring their ideas and concerns to the public hearings, which will continue through the Panhandle this week, go to the Northeast Coast and Central Florida in July, hit South Florida in mid August and finish up in Tampa, St. Petersburg and Southwest Florida in late August.
The most obvious changes will come in the districts that have seen the most growth in the past decade, or whose stagnant growth makes them smaller than the new ideal district. That includes the super-crowded district of freshman Congressmen Richard Nugent, R-Brooksville, which is 33.5 percent overpopulated. The district of U.S. Rep. Connie Mack, R-Cape Coral, is 23 percent overcapacity and U.S. Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Lakeland, has seen his district grow 21 percent.
In the state Senate, the districts of Republican Sens. Alan Hays of Umatilla, Ronda Storms of Valrico and Paula Dockery of Lakeland also will have to shrink. Rep. Stephen Precourt, an Orlando Republican, has the dubious distinction of having the most bloated district in state government, having grown 61 percent over capacity in the last decade.
Weatherford, the House's designated speaker in 2012, has a district that must lose 55 percent of its population. Down state, freshman Rep. Greg Steube, R-Sarasota, has to lose 54 percent of his district.
Several legislative districts, however, won't contract, but will have to expand â€" potentially pitting incumbents against each other. The districts that are now smaller than the ideal size are those of Republican Sen. Dennis Jones of Seminole and Reps. Larry Ahern of St. Petersburg, Ed Hooper of Clearwater, Jeff Brandes of St. Petersburg and Erik Fresen of Miami. Democratic Reps. Rick Kriseman of St. Petersburg, Daryl Rouson of St. Petersburg and Daphne Campbell of Miami Shores also must cover more geography to reach the district population goal.
Unlike the redistricting efforts in 1992 and 2002, which allowed for the quiet protection of incumbents as long as minority representation was given priority, the new Amendments 5 and 6 explicitly say that congressional or legislative districts "may not be drawn to favor or disfavor an incumbent or political party."
Even stronger are the amendments' requirement that districts "shall not be drawn to deny racial or language minorities the equal opportunity to participate in the political process and elect representatives of their choice" â€" a provision that Republican leaders say is a stronger protection than existing law. And, finally, the constitutional mandate imposes what is considered a second tier priority â€" that districts must be contiguous, compact, "as equal in population as feasible, and where feasible must make use of existing city, county and geographical boundaries."
That is a heavy lift for a Legislature that two decades ago created Florida's Third Congressional District, an ink-splat-shaped splotch that strings together a majority of African-American and Democratic voters across nine counties and 140 miles from Jacksonville to Orlando.
The district is held by Democrat U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown and it helped her become and remain one of three African Americans elected to Congress from Florida in 1992 â€" the first time since Reconstruction.
In 1992, Brown was a state representative and part of a coalition of black lawmakers who joined with Republicans â€" then the minority party â€" to concentrate black voters into a district comprising a majority of African American voters. It's a process called "bleaching," which former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor once called "legislative apartheid."
By removing reliably Democratic black voters from surrounding districts, the realignment helped Florida Republicans win control of the Legislature and eventually the congressional delegation.
As a testament to the lasting power of redistricting, Brown's district remained intact through the redistricting process of 2002 and is now regarded as one of the most severely gerrymandered districts in the nation.
A 2002 legal challenge to the Legislature's redistricting maps argued that the districts weren't compact or community based. The Florida Supreme Court rejected that challenge, however, saying that compactness and community-based boundaries were not constitutionally required. The website Redistricting the Nation, run by the software firm Azavea, has studied Florida's congressional districts and ranks them among the least compact in the nation.
The state's new redistricting standards aim to change that. Meanwhile, a 2009 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a North Carolina case found that the only election districts entitled to the minority voting rights protections of the federal Civil Rights Act are those districts in which minorities make up at least 50 percent of the voting age population.
The redistricting rules and the federal court decisions now raise the question of whether Brown's district â€" and many others like it in Florida that were designed to produce a political outcome â€" will withstand this year's redistricting effort.
"That's the million-dollar question,'' said Susan MacManus a University of South Florida political science professor and redistricting expert. "I liken it to a kaleidoscope. You turn it one way and everything else changes. People are going to see the plans and judge them differently. It's a formula for uncertainty."
The day after voters approved the redistricting Amendments 5 and 6, Brown sued, along with U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz Balart, a Miami Republican who as a legislator in 2002 helped draw himself a successful congressional seat. They argued that the amendments will reverse their hard-fought attempts to gain black and Hispanic representative in Congress. They fear that their districts, now packed with minority voters, will be diluted and make it potentially more difficult for minorities to stay in office.
The Florida House joined the lawsuit, led by House Speaker Dean Cannon. Senate President Mike Haridopolos, who campaigned against the amendments and warned they were unworkable, refrained from jumping into the fray, saying the voters had spoken.
Legislators now must not only navigate the requirement to protect minorities and create compact, contiguous districts without favoring incumbents, they must do it with a more racially diverse and densely populated state than ever before.
According to the 2010 census, minorities now make up 42.1 percent of Florida's population with 18.8 percent of the state's residents born in another country. Hispanics are the largest minority group in Florida â€" 22.2 percent â€" while blacks make up the next largest minority.
Fair Districts Now, the bipartisan coalition that campaigned for the amendment, received backing from many groups aligned with Democrats but was also led by Republicans lawyers from previous redistricting battles. Their supporters say they believe that protecting minority voting rights is compatible with the amendment goals of trying to remove the influence of politics in the redistricting, restore competition to congressional and legislative districts and to increase the chances that incumbents will be held accountable.
If legislators adhere to the standards, they say, the districts that emerge this year should more evenly reflect the split between Republicans, Democrats and independent voters in Florida and be more competitive for all politicians.
Republicans now make up 35 percent of the state's registered voters, while Democrats have 41 percent of the electorate and voters with no party affiliation make up 24 percent.
Political representation in the state Legislature and Congress, however, is less reflective of those numbers. Of the state's 25-member congressional delegation, 19 of them are Republican. There are 81 Republicans in the state House and 39 Democrats, while there are 28 Republicans in the Senate to the Democrats' 12. There are no legislators elected with no party affiliation.
No matter the outcome, the new standards will give license to "more people who believe they have standing to file lawsuits,'' predicted Sen. Don Gaetz, chairman of the Senate Redistricting Committee and a Republican from Niceville.
As a result, both the House and Senate have ordered their members not to speak up or ask questions during the hearings so as to avoid making any statement that could draw a legal challenge as to a legislative intent. Legislative staff also has been ordered never to draw a map that includes any notation of a legislator's home.
In anticipation of the legal fight, lawmakers have squirreled away at least $19 million for a legal defense fund. Gaetz said legislators spent nearly $10 million in 2002 defending their redistricting maps and this year, the Senate gave itself a $9 million budget to finance its redistricting defense. The House, meanwhile, has set aside $8.5 million and has another $23 million at its disposal in untapped reserves.
Weatherford, however, said he remains hopeful that lawmakers can reach an agreement on time and avoid litigation." I don't think it's rocket science,'' he said. "There's a way to do this and a way to do it right."
Mary Ellen Klas can be reached at meklas@MiamiHerald.com.
Source: http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/elections/florida-starts-lengthy-contested-process-to-redraw-states-political-maps/1176022 (http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/elections/florida-starts-lengthy-contested-process-to-redraw-states-political-maps/1176022)
The one thing that gets me is the argument that minority districts are needed to get minorities elected. What you're saying is that minority candidates aren't good/smart/savvy/etc enough to run against white candidates in an open race. How is that not racist?
The only minorities those districts help out are the ones who keep getting reelected with ease no matter what.
No more packing or cracking
California’s new way of drawing political maps could become the model for the rest of America
ONE lowly state senator from southern California, upon seeing the state’s new electoral maps and realising that no incumbent member of Congress currently lives in a district to be drawn around her home, spontaneously declared: “I’m in, I’m in, I’m in, I’m in,†and thus became a candidate for the House of Representatives in Washington, DC. Other state senators, assemblymen and US representatives were rather less effusive. Several suddenly found themselves sharing a district with political allies who may now become rivals, or facing a much less sympathetic electorate.
This chaos among California’s incumbent politicians is a good sign. For the new lines of 177 districts, released on June 10th and to be finalised by August 15th, were drawn, for the first time, by a genuinely independent commission of citizens, not by state legislators. The panel’s mandate is to make compact, contiguous districts that preserve natural “communities of interest†such as ethnic groups, and to ignore politics altogether. The commissioners do not even have voter-registration statistics or the addresses of incumbents. The revolutionary new idea is that, instead of politicians choosing their voters, voters should choose their representatives.
This marks a dramatic change in the history of American democracy. The practice of rapacious boundary-drawing dates back to the Founding Fathers. Patrick Henry, who famously demanded liberty or death, tried to draw a congressional map of Virginia to deny his foe James Madison election. In 1812, the partisans of Elbridge Gerry, then governor of Massachusetts, drew a state-Senate district so bizarre that its salamander shape led to the term “gerrymanderingâ€, which persists to this day.
By contrast, a related flaw, called malapportionment, was largely fixed in the 1960s. Until then, districts across America had very different populations but equal representation, so that some (mostly rural) communities were over-represented in legislatures and Congress, while others were under-represented. But in 1964 the Supreme Court enshrined the principle of “one person, one voteâ€. It requires districts to have the same population, so that their boundaries must be redrawn after every census (ie, once a decade).
Because most states still let their legislators do this redrawing, gerrymandering has remained a problem. In democracies with proportional representation (as in continental Europe), maps are not very important. But in America’s “winner-takes-all†system, where the candidate with a plurality of votes becomes the representative and all other votes count for nothing, maps are crucial. Thus legislators like to draw lines that, in the jargon, “pack†more of their supporters into one district to make it safe, or “crack†a hostile block of voters into several districts, and so, with many variants, forth.
Such gerrymandering can be extremely partisan when the majority party in a legislature draws districts that favour its candidates, as the Republicans did in Texas a decade ago. But it can also happen on a bipartisan basis, when both parties agree on maps that favour the incumbents. California’s legislature did this in 2001, producing cynically squiggly districts that made most of the seats safe for whichever Republicans or Democrats already held them. In the 612 races of California’s last four elections, only seven seats have changed from one party to the other.
Over the years, several states have tried to scrub their maps clean of such shenanigans. Iowa was first in 1980, making redistricting largely apolitical, although the legislature must still approve all maps. But Iowa is a homogenous and geographically simple state, and its system was not copied. Some 19 other states, aside from California, have established commissions, either as the main mapmakers or as advisers to the legislature. But most of these panels are still, one way or another, appointed by politicians, with varying degrees of independence. Arizona’s commission, the result of a ballot measure in 2000, was the most promising, but its maps were fought over for seven years in the courts.
So now comes California’s reform, which could be “the great experiment that other states will followâ€, according to Tim Storey, a redistricting analyst at the National Conference of State Legislatures. Also approved directly by voters, in two separate ballot measures, this commission consists of 14 members, chosen in a complex but rigorous process, partly by lottery. In its diligence and transparency, it has been above reproach.
The hope among many voters, of course, is that more districts will thereby become competitive, forcing politicians to become more moderate. It helps a lot that California has also adopted a non-partisan primary system with the same aim. Analysis by the Public Policy Institute of California, a think-tank, shows that the maps do indeed make several additional districts toss-ups (see chart), with Democrats benefiting slightly more.
On the other hand, Californians may also have set themselves up to be disappointed, says Paul Mitchell at Redistricting Partners, a consultancy. The new system is certainly “shaking up the ant farm, but it’s still an ant farm,†and political extremism has many causes, not just gerrymandering. One only needs to look at the US Senate, whose members are all elected statewide, and therefore not gerrymandered at all, to see that. But at least from now on voters are a bit more likely to feel that they had a genuine choice, and that they deserve what they chose.
http://www.economist.com/node/18836108
It is refreshing to hear someone call this sort of thing a bipartisan effort... ::)
QuoteSuch gerrymandering can be extremely partisan when the majority party in a legislature draws districts that favour its candidates, as the Republicans did in Texas a decade ago. But it can also happen on a bipartisan basis, when both parties agree on maps that favour the incumbents. California’s legislature did this in 2001, producing cynically squiggly districts that made most of the seats safe for whichever Republicans or Democrats already held them. In the 612 races of California’s last four elections, only seven seats have changed from one party to the other.
Quote from: finehoe on June 20, 2011, 11:59:08 AM
No more packing or cracking
California’s new way of drawing political maps could become the model for the rest of America
....... the new lines of 177 districts, released on June 10th and to be finalised by August 15th, were drawn, for the first time, by a genuinely independent commission of citizens, not by state legislators. The panel’s mandate is to make compact, contiguous districts that preserve natural “communities of interest†such as ethnic groups, and to ignore politics altogether. The commissioners do not even have voter-registration statistics or the addresses of incumbents. The revolutionary new idea is that, instead of politicians choosing their voters, voters should choose their representatives.
This marks a dramatic change in the history of American democracy. The practice of rapacious boundary-drawing dates back to the Founding Fathers. Patrick Henry, who famously demanded liberty or death, tried to draw a congressional map of Virginia to deny his foe James Madison election. In 1812, the partisans of Elbridge Gerry, then governor of Massachusetts, drew a state-Senate district so bizarre that its salamander shape led to the term “gerrymanderingâ€, which persists to this day.
Hmmm, in true Republican denialist, obstructionist fashion Republicans in Florida are going on a listening tour!!
Delay, Deny and Death to Fair Districting is what they are after!!
QuoteOn Monday afternoon in Tallahassee, the legislature held the first in a series of hearings scheduled across the state to discuss the the maps the legislature is supposed to be drawing for Florida's House, Senate, and Congressional districts. There's just one problem: the legislature hasn't started drawing the maps.
As the hearing came to a close, it became clear that these hearings would be exactly what the ACLU of Florida and the 63% of Florida voters who voted for Florida's fair district amendments feared it would be: a charade.
Instead of beginning the process of upholding their Constitutional duty to draw district maps, Florida legislators are holding what they're calling a "listening tour," asking for public comment on the redistricting process without giving the public anything to comment on.
Florida voters overwhelmingly voted last fall to implement fair districts and end gerrymandering when they passed Amendments 5 and 6, the Fair District Amendments with 63% of the vote.
The public demand for fair districts is clear. But the legislature is dragging its feet, spending taxpayer money fighting fair districts, and travelling across the state holding farcical "hearings" where they're asking you to do their job.
The ACLU of Florida is pushing hard against any effort to make Florida elections more unfair. We were brought legal challenges to force the implementation of Amendments 5 and 6, we sued in Federal Court to stop the Voter Suppression Act passed by the legislature, and today we sent a letter to the Department of Justice (PDF) saying the Voter Suppression Act violates the Voting Rights Act.
As with all those cases, the ACLU of Florida is monitoring the redistricting process to ensure that the right of all Floridians to have their vote counted is upheld. We will continue throughout the redistricting process to hold the legislature accountable and, until they do their job and begin to draw fair districts for all Floridians, we will continue to ask ACLU of Florida supporters like you to attend these hearings repeating our simple demand: show us the maps!
http://www.aclufl.org/issues/voting_rights/2011redistricting.cfm
As always, thank you for standing with the ACLU of Florida in defense of freedom.
The ACLU of Florida Online Team
www.aclufl.org
Quote from: FayeforCure on June 20, 2011, 06:40:44 PM
Hmmm, in true Republican denialist, obstructionist fashion Republicans in Florida are going on a listening tour!!
Delay, Deny and Death to Fair Districting is what they are after!!
please Faye...as BT noted above, this is a bi-partisan thing...Corinne Brown and the Dems were more than happy to create a ridiculously gerrymandered district in 1992...and the Repubs were giddy because it created 3-4 relatively safe R districts.
not endorsing anything stephen...just noting that both parties are guilty...and while Republicans control the process in FL in 2012, there will surely be Dems who go along with it
Quote from: stephendare on June 20, 2011, 10:14:25 PM
Ok, but why are you noting it? Isnt it about excusing present bad behavior on one parties part by mentioning similar bad behaviors on another party's part?
I really hate when bridge troll does this, please don't join him.
Bad behavior is bad behavior.
And I really hate it when you and yours attribute some bad behavior by republicans as somehow common only to republicans. It is a constant drumbeat from yourself and Faye... and it is hypocritical... another attribute which in your view seems to be of the sole dominion of republicans when in fact it is common to politicians of both parties.
Bad behavior IS bad behavior.
Quote from: tufsu1 on June 20, 2011, 09:47:55 PM
Quote from: FayeforCure on June 20, 2011, 06:40:44 PM
Hmmm, in true Republican denialist, obstructionist fashion Republicans in Florida are going on a listening tour!!
Delay, Deny and Death to Fair Districting is what they are after!!
please Faye...as BT noted above, this is a bi-partisan thing...Corinne Brown and the Dems were more than happy to create a ridiculously gerrymandered district in 1992...and the Repubs were giddy because it created 3-4 relatively safe R districts.
So who benefited most?
As usual, Dems contend with the scraps...........if my rudimentary math is correct.
Lets see:
1. Republicans gained 4-5 guaranteed Florida votes in US Congress ( Mica, Stearns, Crenshaw and have been faithfully executing their Republican voting record since 1992)
2. Democrats gained only 1 guaranteed Florida vote in US Congress: Corinne Brown
See all 5 Republican districts surrounding Corinne Brown's district 3 here:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/findyourreps.xpd?state=FL
Wow, the stupid Dems bargained for this kind of lopsided power for Republicans? The kind of lop-sided Republican power in US Congress that has held NE Florida in a choke hold since the early 90s?
US democracy is a farce if 95% of incumbents get re-elected EVERY time, and one third of incumbents run unopposed!!!
Matter of fact:
Florida boasts 650,000 more registered Democrats, yet Democrats hold only 6 Congressional districts vs 19 Republican Congressional districts. How is that for lop-sided?!?!?My own conclusion is that the US is about more about M&M than anything else:
1. Money
2. Make Believe
"I do not believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
- Galileo Galilei
QuoteIf there's one thing conservatives enjoy more than accusing liberals of doing the horrible things that conservatives actually do, it's imitating the horrible things they have convinced themselves that liberals do.
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/06/14/tea_party_summer_camp
Yes let's fight over who has done it the most and which group is historically responsible. Or...... Wait for it......We could lobby those trying to do it again not to.
Quote from: JeffreyS on June 21, 2011, 11:20:39 AM
Yes let's fight over who has done it the most and which group is historically responsible. Or...... Wait for it......We could lobby those trying to do it again not to.
Agreed.
QuoteRandolph to Cannon: Taxpayers deserve full & detailed accounting of Fair Districts legal bills … so turn ‘em over
Political Insider â€" posted by scottmaxwell on August, 1 2011 2:35 PM
Discuss This: Comments(11) | Add to del.icio.us | Digg it
State Rep. Scott Randolph has read a lot in the media and this newspaper about how House Speaker Dean Cannondecided to use public money to try to overturn the public’s vote for Fair Districts.
But he has heard very few specifics from the House itself â€" even though he’s a member.
So Randolph has decided to get them … one way or another.
Late last week, Randolph, D-Orlando, sent a public-records request to Cannon, R-Winter Park, asking for “detailed accounting†for how the taxpayers’ money is being spent.
Good for him. And shame on Cannon and the House for not making it more readily available to the taxpayers in the first place.
Until now, the most public information came from nonspecific public records that I first shared with readers in Sentinel columns earlier this year. They were generic invoices from firms like Cannon’s former employer, GrayRobinson, which received the bulk of the taxpayer’s money for this legal fight. ($100,000 in one month … $70,000 in another … and rarely with any explanation more specific than “Re: Redistricting 2012 cycle.â€)
Such generic info isn’t good enough â€" not with the public’s money (and will) at stake. Randolph agrees, telling Cannon in his public-records request: “… I find it imperative to be able to tell my constituents how their tax dollars are being used in this litigation.â€
Randolph’s request went on to say: “I have seen the monthly summaries that give the total amount billed, but have thus far not seen the release of detailed billing records. Please consider this a formal request for all public records related to billing records in this matter.â€
Contacted earlier today, Randolph said the request was simply a matter of accountability, adding: “I’d also like to ensure that we are not getting overbilled as taxpayers.â€
You can read the full records request here: RecordsRequest.
http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_local_namesblog/