Editorials: In America, voters don’t pick their politicians. Politicians pick their voters | Wayne Dawkins | The Guardian

One out of every five Virginians in the birthplace of English America are black – disproportionally more than the one out eight people nationwide who are African American. It is therefore ludicrous that, since 2010, even more black people per capita were packed into US Representative Robert C “Bobby” Scott’s already predominantly black district. That district, three federal judges declared on Tuesday, was gerrymandered, and they ordered the Virginia General Assembly to redraw the boundaries in 2015. But elected officials have forfeited their chances to do that job competently. It does not matter whether Republicans or Democrats hold the power; both sides have been guilty over decades of abusing voters by gerrymandering districts. In the 21st century, voters don’t pick their elected officials; politicians pick their voters. This time, a nonpartisan commission should draw the congressional boundaries.

Florida: Far From Over, Florida’s Redistricting Wrangles Now Focus on State Senate Boundaries | Flagler Live

While much of the state’s political establishment has focused on the congressional redistricting lawsuit and its possible effects on future elections, a related fight over the map for the state Senate is continuing. That case could eventually lead to new districts for the 40-member upper chamber, which, like the state House, is currently dominated by Republicans. Any final ruling against that plan would require a third draft of the Senate districts after the Florida Supreme Court tossed the original lawmaker-approved plan two years ago. For now, both sides are still working to discover evidence for an eventual courtroom clash on the Senate map. Meanwhile, a coalition of voting-rights organizations that includes the League of Women Voters of Florida is continuing the legal fight over the state’s congressional map, which was redrawn after Leon County Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis ruled it unconstitutional in July.

Editorials: Blaming Gerrymandering Has Its Limits, as Pennsylvania Shows | Nate Cohn/New York Times

There is no question that Republicans have a huge advantage in the House. But there is a big debate about whether it’s because of partisan gerrymandering or because Democrats are gerrymandering themselves into urban, heavily Democratic districts. One reason the debate continues, despite a near consensus among political scientists, is because the “wasted votes” phenomenon is abstract and hard to illustrate. In a Sunday Review article in The Times, I argued that the Democratic problem was mainly because of the distribution of their voters, not because of partisan gerrymandering, but I didn’t have a chance to include one of my favorite illustrations of the Democratic problem: Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is a state where Mr. Obama won by a clear margin but lost a majority of the state’s congressional districts. The state was heavily gerrymandered by Republicans, which lets them squeeze out a few extra districts. But the Republicans probably would have still had an advantage on a neutral map.

Florida: Is Redistricting Case Headed to State’s High Court? | New Service of Florida

A coalition of voting-rights organizations and individual voters wants the Florida Supreme Court take up the legal battle over the state’s congressional districts. In a notice of appeal filed Friday with the 1st District Court of Appeal, the groups—which include the League of Women Voters of Florida—also said they were giving up on having the lines changed in time for this year’s congressional elections. That had emerged as a major flashpoint in the battle between the Republican-led Legislature and the voting groups about whether congressional districts violated the anti-gerrymandering Fair Districts constitutional amendments approved by voters in 2010. In July, Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis found that a congressional map approved by lawmakers in 2012 violated the constitutional requirements. That led lawmakers to hold a special legislative session and redraw portions of the map. Lewis upheld the new map, despite arguments from the voting groups that it continued to violate the constitution.

Florida: Voting rights groups want Florida Supreme Court to hear redistricting case | jacksonville.com

A coalition of voting-rights organizations and individual voters wants the Florida Supreme Court to take up the legal battle over the state’s congressional districts. In a notice of appeal filed Friday with the 1st District Court of Appeal, the groups, which include the League of Women Voters of Florida, also said they were giving up on having the lines changed in time for this year’s congressional elections. That had emerged as a major flashpoint in the battle between the Republican-led Legislature and the voting groups about whether congressional districts violated the anti-gerrymandering Fair Districts constitutional amendments approved by voters in 2010. In July, Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis found that a congressional map approved by lawmakers in 2012 violated the constitutional requirements. That led lawmakers to hold a special legislative session and redraw portions of the map. Lewis upheld the new map, despite arguments from the voting groups that it continued to violate the constitution.

National: Forget 2016: Democrats already have a plan for 2020 | MSNBC

As President Obama’s second term winds down and Hillary Clinton’s likely presidential campaign winds up, it feels like the 2016 election is drawing even more attention than the upcoming midterm races. But there’s another election increasingly on the minds of Democratic lawmakers, party operatives, big money donors, and progressive activists: 2020. That’s the year voters will elect state lawmakers who will redraw congressional and state legislative districts all over the country. Last week, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee announced it would commit at least $70 million to Advantage 2020, a program aimed at targeting legislative chambers in key states over the next four election cycles with the specific aim of influencing redistricting. The plan calls on Democrats to invest resources not just in state chambers the party has a shot at winning this November, but in legislatures where they might have a chance at slowly eroding a GOP majority over time thanks to demographic trends.

Florida: Redistricting Map Favoring GOP Allowed One Time | Bloomberg

A Florida judge allowed the use of voting districts favoring Republicans in November while approving revised congressional boundaries for subsequent elections. Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis in Tallahassee ruled earlier that the election map was improperly drawn and ordered the state legislature to revise the districts to address “gerrymandering” in two of them. While voting-rights groups argued that a new map should go into effect in 2014, Lewis said in his ruling yesterday that holding special elections this year for the districts “is not an appropriate remedy under the circumstances.” The new map would instead be in place for 2016 elections.

Florida: Original districts stand for 2014 election, new map to take effect in 2016 | Miami Herald

Florida’s flawed congressional districts may remain in place for two more years and newly drawn boundaries for seven north and central districts don’t have to take effect until 2016, a Tallahassee circuit court judge ruled late Friday. Judge Terry Lewis upheld the revisions to the state’s congressional map approved by the Florida Legislature during a three-day special session earlier this month. But he said the original map, which he ruled unconstitutional a month ago, could stand for the 2014 election. “An election in 2015 is not a viable option,” Lewis wrote in his four-page order. “The 2014 elections will have to be held under the map as enacted in 2012.” That will come as a relief to U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville, and U.S. Rep. Dan Webster, R-Winter Garden, whose congressional districts were the target of the court’s criticism. Brown and Webster feared being elected to a new term in November only to have to face a special election possibly next year under the newly configured boundaries.

Florida: In Redistricting Battle, Both Parties Claim to Offer Better Protections for Black Voters | Governing

The racial tensions that coursed for years beneath the surface in Florida’s redistricting battle came into sharp focus Wednesday as lawyers for each side blasted each other for attempting to use black voters for partisan gain. The conflict emerged at a hearing Wednesday called by Leon County Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis to decide whether the Florida Legislature’s redrawn congressional map meets the constitutional standards imposed by voters in 2010. Lewis said he will decide “as quickly as I can” whether to accept the new map drawn by legislators last week in a three-day special session. Legislators had until Aug. 15 to revise two congressional districts he ruled invalid — one held by Democrat U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, and the other held by Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Webster.

Editorials: We need a fairer system for choosing House members | Katrina van den Heuvel/The Washington Post

In the original conception of our Constitution, the House of Representatives was to be the branch of government that best reflected the will of the people. House members cannot serve without being elected — vacancies are not filled by appointees — and they must face the voters every two years. Notably, the House holds pride of place as the first branch of government to be described in the Constitution. The framers move directly from “We the People” to the House, underlining the notion that, for our Constitution (and our government) to function, representatives must be accountable to the people. Unfortunately, as we near the 2014 midterm elections, the reality of House races today clashes with that goal. Let’s start with the connection between votes and seats. In 2012, we faced a major choice between the major parties and a mandate on President Obama’s first term. In the presidential race, Obama defeated Mitt Romney in the national popular vote by almost three percentage points, and Republicans suffered the worst performance in Senate elections by any major party in a half-century.

Florida: Judge urged to redraw redistricting maps | Tampa Tribune

A coalition of plaintiffs has asked a Tallahassee judge to redraw the state’s congressional maps and implement them for the 2014 midterm election. That request came from the plaintiffs, led by the League of Women Voters of Florida, who successfully challenged the state’s congressional maps in court. Leon Circuit Judge Terry Lewis ruled in July that two of the state’s 27 congressional districts were drawn to favor Republicans, which isn’t allowed under the fair district anti-gerrymandering provisions in the state constitution. As a result of the Tallahassee-area judge’s ruling, lawmakers held a five-day special session to redraw the congressional lines. Those redrawn maps are opposed by the plaintiffs, who formalized their concern in a 35-page objection filed Monday with the judge.

Alabama: Black groups tell Supreme Court Alabama districts biased | Montgomery Advertiser

The Alabama Legislature will be further racially polarized by new district boundaries that pack more black voters into certain districts than the law requires, state black political groups told the Supreme Court last week. The justices agreed in June to hear the complaint from Alabama that the Republican majority went too far in using race to redistrict itself in 2012. The result, according to black Democratic legislators, is unusually high black majorities in districts surrounded by districts that are even more white. “The Constitution does not permit states to stumble into such excessively segregated election districts, whether through good faith or bad,” wrote lawyers for the Alabama Democratic Conference, one of the groups involved in the case.

Florida: Congressional map redistricting battle not over | News Service of Florida

The special redistricting session held by the Legislature lasted just five days, but the two-year battle over the boundaries of the state’s 27 congressional districts seems to be far from over. Voting-rights groups who sued to get the original map overturned say the new plan, approved Monday on nearly party-line votes in the House and Senate, isn’t enough of an improvement for Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis to sign off on it. And there’s still no clarity on whether an election that is already underway in some counties will be delayed. Deirdre Macnab, president of the League of Women Voters of Florida, said Tuesday that the map passed by the Legislature this week “looks suspiciously like” the blueprint that Lewis tossed in July.

Editorials: Floridians tried to stop gerrymandering, and Republicans gerrymandered anyways. We’re about to see who wins. | Aaron Blake/The Washington Post

In 2010, Florida’s voters passed two constitutional amendments aimed at reducing partisan gerrymandering. Amendments 5 and 6 held that districts must not be drawn to “favor or disfavor” a party or incumbent or dilute the influence of minority voters. Democrats and advocates for redistricting reform hailed the passage of the measures, arguing that they could kneecap the GOP’s ability to continue its domination of a congressional map in what is otherwise a swing state. We’re about to find out whether there’s any truth to that. Republicans held 19 of the state’s 25 districts following the 2010 election. With the amendments in effect and the state’s map expanded to 27 districts in 2012, Democrats added four seats, for a total of 10 of the state’s 27 districts. But that had as much or more to do with the GOP losing a few swing seats than with the new redistricting rules. Indeed, the rules weren’t really legally tested until this year, when a judge last month ruled that two of them needed to be redrawn because they were drawn for partisan purposes. The GOP-controlled state legislature approved a new new map this week, with very minimal changes.

California: Senate Bill Strengthening California Voting Rights Act Headed to Gov. Brown | California Newswire

A bill that would strengthen the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA) is on its way to the desk of Calif. Governor Jerry Brown for consideration. The bill won final legislative approval today in the State Senate. SB 1365 by Senator Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima) would expand the CVRA by explicitly prohibiting school boards, cities, and counties from gerrymandering district boundaries in a manner that would weaken the ability of a racial or language minority to influence the outcome of an election. “With today’s vote, we are one step closer to strengthening voting rights in Californian,” said Senator Alex Padilla. “As our state becomes increasingly diverse we must ensure that the rights of all voters are protected,” added Padilla.

Florida: Arguing Florida Failed Again, Dems Want Court-Drawn Map | Governing

Florida legislators completed their fix of a congressional redistricting map Monday, sending the plan to Gov. Rick Scott for approval as they scramble to meet Friday’s deadline set by a state court. In an attempt to address the concerns by Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis, who said the map violated a constitutional ban on partisan gerrymandering, the legislature ended a three-day special session by moving 368,000 voters in North and Central Florida into new districts as it changed the boundaries of seven congressional seats. The House and Senate voted for the map along party lines, as a handful of Jacksonville Democrats voted with Republicans in solidarity with U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, a Jacksonville Democrat whose winding district was invalidated because it packed Democrats voters into the district so that Republicans in surrounding districts would face less competition. The new map makes the biggest changes to the districts now held by Brown, John Mica, R-Orlando, and Dan Webster, R-Winter Garden. Lewis ordered the Legislature to fix Districts 5 and 10, held by Brown and Webster, by Friday, saying they were in violation of the state’s Fair Districts rules. No South Florida districts were modified.

California: Bill to Strengthen California Voting Rights Act Approved by State Assembly | California Newswire

A bill to strengthen voter protections under the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA) was approved today by the State Assembly. SB 1365 by Senator Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima) expands the CVRA by explicitly prohibiting school boards, cities, and counties from gerrymandering district boundaries in a manner that would weaken the ability of a racial or language minority to influence the outcome of an election. Current state law only allows a challenge of at-large elections. The bill now goes to the State Senate for a final concurrence vote and then to the Governor’s desk. “With today’s vote, we are one step closer to strengthening voting rights for all Californians,” said Senator Alex Padilla. “As our state becomes increasingly diverse we must ensure that the rights of all voters are protected,” added Padilla.

Florida: Legislators end quick session with new map but challenge is likely | Tampa Bay Times

Florida legislators completed their hasty fix of a congressional redistricting map Monday, sending the plan on to Gov. Rick Scott for approval as they scramble to meet Friday’s deadline set by a state court. In an attempt to address the concerns by Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis – who said the map violated a constitutional ban on partisan gerrymandering – the legislature moved 368,000 voters in North and Central Florida into new districts as it changed the boundaries of seven congressional seats. The House and Senate voted for the map along party lines, as a handful of Jacksonville Democrats voted with Republicans in solidarity with U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, a Jacksonville Democrat whose winding district was invalidated because it packed Democrats voters into the district so that Republicans in surrounding districts would face less competition.

Texas: Fight Resumes Over Maps That Curb Latino Power | Bloomberg

Texas and voting-rights activists supported by the U.S. government are set to resume a three-year battle over claims that Republican lawmakers intentionally drew Congressional districts to curb the political power of the state’s growing Latino population. Texas seeks to convince a three-judge federal panel today in San Antonio that its voter maps were designed to improve re-election chances for Republican incumbents and weaken Democratic opponents, not dilute minority voting strength. “Partisan gerrymandering” is legal, the state says. The federal government and civil-rights activists say the state is making a distinction without a difference because minorities tend to vote for Democrats in Texas. “Partisanship is not a defense to intentional vote dilution,” Bryan Sells, a lawyer with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, told the San Antonio judges last month.

Florida: Wanted: Honest Algorithms For Voter Redistricting | InformationWeek

When drawing new districts for Congress and the State Legislature, Florida has what sounds like a simple rule: “Districts shall be as nearly equal in population as is practicable; districts shall be compact; and districts shall, where feasible, utilize existing political and geographical boundaries.” Yet as I write this, the Legislature is meeting in special session to address a judge’s ruling that lawmakers “made a mockery” of the redistricting procedure when they drew new maps in 2012, tilting them in favor of the Republican majority. Under the ruling, legislators must now redraw at least two districts — potentially forcing elections in the affected areas to be postponed until after November. In 2010, I campaigned for the FairDistricts amendment to the Florida constitution, which included the anti-gerrymandering rule quoted above, stating that districts should be compact. There was more to the legal language, of course, including clauses designed to avoid conflicts with other state and federal laws. But I thought the principles were pretty clear. While gathering petition signatures outside the library to get the measure on the ballot, I kept a map of some of the odder jigsaw puzzle piece districts in Florida taped to the reverse side of my clipboard. “What it will mean, if this passes,” I would tell people, “is that districts will be neat little squares, pretty much, instead of crazy squiggles.” And yet somehow the redistricting process, following passage of the amendment, still produced Florida’s US Congressional District 5 (since 2013) via Wikimedia Commons. That is Congressional District 5, which stretches from Jacksonville to Orlando, a length from tip to tail of well over 100 miles.

Editorials: Redistricting 2.0: Lots of shoes still to drop | Tom Jackson/The Tampa Tribune

So the Legislature is back at it, once more attempting to thread the devilishly minuscule eye of a needle only lawyers could love. Which is appropriate, because the thing was the creation of lawyers in the first place, and lawyers incapable of making the absurd and impractical seem reasonable soon come to be known as teachers or journalists or multilevel marketers. I mean, as anyone who has sat through a courtroom case can tell you, if all you hear is one side — it tends not to matter which side — even the lawyerly equivalent of Boo Weekly can make his version of the argument sound impenetrable. This is not to suggest, back in 2010 when voters were challenged to decide how future political boundaries would be drawn, the face-value presentation on behalf of compact, contiguous and party-neutral districts lacked merit. Indeed, there was then and remains today much to commend about such an arrangement, the very least of which is the likelihood that districts thus composed would simultaneously yield fewer safe seats while creating more competition. The last I looked, competition was revered as among the most precious of American virtues.

Florida: Legislature: Don’t talk to congressional members, political consultants | Orlando Sentinel

In advance of a rapid-fire redistricting special session slated to start Thursday, House and Senate Republican leaders have ordered staff to have no contact with congressional members, lobbyists or political consultants. Those three cohorts of influence-peddlers and politicos helped the Legislature run afoul of Florida’s anti-gerrymandering constitutional requirements, and lawmakers appear to be taking no chances this time. “House Redistricting Committee staff have been informed that they are to have no interactions with any member of Congress, Congressional staffer or aide, or with any political consultant,” House Redistricting Chairman Richard Corcoran, R-Port Richey, said in a memo. “If any member of the House suggests to Redistricting Committee staff that a plan be changed with an intent to favor or disfavor any incumbent or political party, staff should disregard the suggestion entirely and report the conversation directly to me.”

Florida: Judge takes on gerrymandering; sets stage for Supreme Court cases in fall | The Washington Post

About 10 years ago, the justices of the Supreme Court took a good, hard look at the way politicians bend, tweak and manipulate electoral boundaries in order to protect themselves and punish their enemies — and threw in the towel. The Constitution, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for a plurality in Vieth v. Jubelirer , does not provide “a judicially enforceable limit on the political considerations that the states and Congress may take into account when districting.” In other words, politics is politics. It’s the court’s duty to decide what the law is, Scalia said, but sometimes the answer is that it is none of the court’s business. Scalia acknowledged that the Supreme Court had previously ruled otherwise. But “18 years of essentially pointless litigation” had convinced Scalia and others on the court that it was impossible to come up with a test to decide when partisan gerrymandering amounted to a constitutional violation. The political parties have been running through that green light ever since.

Editorials: Keeping elections on track the best choice in Florida redistricting mess | The Tampa Tribune

Circuit Judge Terry Lewis is skeptical he can redraw the boundaries of the state’s congressional districts in time for the primary and general elections this year. He has good reason for skepticism. Military ballots have already been mailed overseas, and local supervisors of elections are mailing ballots to voters in their counties and preparing early-voting sites in advance of the Aug. 26 primary election. To put the brakes on that process and disrupt or delay the primary and general elections would be foolish. Although the legality of the district boundaries is clearly in question, it’s simply too late to pull back now. He should allow the elections to proceed with the existing maps. If he does, we hope the parties that successfully challenged the maps will consider the chaos an immediate appeal will cause and accept that it’s too late. Holding the elections as scheduled will also allow time to redraw the lines, and to determine whether Lewis, the Legislature, an appointed third party, or the state’s highest court have that authority. After they are redrawn, perhaps special elections can be held in the affected districts.

Florida: Judge ‘skeptical’ he can delay election with unconstitutional map | Orlando Sentinel

Facing a looming electoral deadline, a judge said Thursday he was “extremely skeptical” he could delay elections this fall using Central Florida’s illegally drawn congressional maps. Instead, Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis said he would make a decision by the end of next week on what to do now that he has found they unconstitutionally were drawn with partisan intent. Lewis ruled earlier this month that the Florida Legislature’s congressional map violated the 2010 anti-gerrymandering reforms voter passed, thanks to evidence presented at trial that a handful of GOP political operatives had gamed the system to get more favorable maps submitted to the Legislature. But now that ruling is running into the realities of the political calendar. With a primary slated for next month, thousands of absentee and overseas ballots already mailed, and a slate of candidates already lined up, lawyers for the Legislature and county election supervisors said unhinging that process now would cause chaos.

Editorials: Florida Déjà Voodoo – Why there is no reform that could be better for progressives than redistricting reform | Ron Klain/Slate

In my legal career, I’ve suffered two painful defeats litigating against the Republican political machine of Florida. The first was a case called Bush v. Gore. The second—less famous, but just as bitter—came two years later, in 2002, when I worked on a legal challenge to Florida’s absurdly partisan redistricting plan, only to see our claims rejected by both the state and federal courts. So last week’s court ruling overturning gerrymandered congressional districts in Florida gave me a serious case of déjà vu for several reasons. First, its author was Leon County Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis—a major figure in the post-2000 Florida election litigation miasma, who ultimately wound up overseeing the statewide hand recount of ballots that the U.S. Supreme Court halted in its infamous 5–4 order. Second, the ruling represented a long overdue vindication of our 2002 claim that the Florida Legislature had abused its power in entrenching its control over the state through redistricting. While much of the coverage of Lewis’ opinion has focused on the Florida legislative “chicanery” that it laid bare, a more substantial question is this: Why did this case strike down a hyper-partisan districting plan, when virtually every other such court challenge, in virtually every other state, has failed over the past three decades? How was the widespread bastardization that allows “representatives to pick their voters, instead of voters picking their representatives” finally checked by a court decision?

Editorials: Voter ID lawsuits are the last chance to prove the laws are intentionally racist | Ana Marie Cox/The Guardian

This week, the US Department of Justice and the state of Texas started arguments in the first of what will be a summer-long dance between the two authorities over voting rights. There are three suits being tried in two districts over gerrymandering and Texas’s voter identification law – both of which are said to be racially motivated. In its filing, the DoJ describes the law as “exceed[ing] the requirements imposed by any other state” at the time that it passed. If the DoJ can prove the arguments in its filing, it won’t just defeat an unjust law: it could put the fiction of “voter fraud” to rest once and for all. These battles, plus parallel cases proceeding in North Carolina, hinge on proving that the states acted with explicitly exclusionary intent toward minority voters – a higher standard was necessary prior to the Supreme Court’s gutting of Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) back in January. Under Section 3, the DoJ had wide latitude to look at possible consequences of voting regulation before they were even passed – the “preclearance” provision. Ironically, because the states held to preclearance had histories of racial discrimination, some of the messier aspects of the laws’ current intentions escaped comment.

Florida: Politicos Ponder Fallout From Redistricting Ruling | WJCT

Members of Congress, candidates and political observers are grappling with the fallout of a judge’s Thursday ruling that two of the state’s congressional districts were illegally drawn for partisan reasons. Lawyers on Friday were preparing to ask Leon County Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis to move quickly to prescribe a remedy for the flawed map. Meanwhile, Democratic Congresswoman Corrine Brown blasted Lewis’s decision, while a former congressman blamed the ruling after pulling the plug on a comeback attempt. While Lewis declared that the GOP-dominated Legislature’s maps were unconstitutional under the state’s anti-gerrymandering standards approved by voters in 2010, he did not specifically lay out a fix for the districts. He could redraw the lines himself or order lawmakers to do it.

Editorials: Gerrymandering Efficiency Gap: A Better Way to Measure Gerrymandering | Nicholas Stephanopoulos/New Republic

If insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, then litigants who challenge gerrymandering must be mad. Last month, a federal court threw out the Texas Democratic Party’s claim that the state’s new congressional and state house districts are unlawful. This was the twelfth time in a row that this sort of claim has failed in the current cycle. Plaintiffs’ record of futility now spans at least three dozen cases over four decades. It doesn’t have to be this way. Litigants keep losing these lawsuits because they keep proposing standards the courts have already rejected (such as partisan intent). They’re failing to capitalize on encouraging comments by the Supreme Court, which show that it’s open to a test based on partisan symmetry—the idea that district plans should treat the parties equally. In a forthcoming law review article, Eric McGhee and I lay out just such a test. If plaintiffs were to use it in litigation, they’d have a fighting chance at winning. And if they were to win, then the whole landscape of redistricting in America would be transformed.

Florida: Redistricting trial exposes political dirty laundry | Miami Herald

Every 10 years after a census, political lines are redrawn nationally to reapportion congressional seats based on population. Growing states, like Florida, may pick up a congressional seat or two at a cost to other states. Such was the case in 2012. In Florida, the Legislature draws the lines for its own districts as well as those for the growing congressional delegation. While we would like to believe these lines would be drawn fairly and without regard to protecting incumbents, rewarding favorites and growing representation by the majority party, there’s reason to question the outcomes of previous efforts under both parties. Attempts to move redistricting responsibility from the hands of legislators to independent or bipartisan committees, as in seven other states, haven’t gained traction. Frustrated by what they viewed as an incestuous arrangement, citizens and voting-rights groups, including the League of Women Voters, led the effort to place a pair of constitutional amendments on the ballot for voters to consider.