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.
How did this happen? Miami Herald columnist Fred Grimm explains it pretty well: Florida lawmakers can’t be trusted to put public interests over their job security. By manipulating the map, lawmakers can choose their voters rather than letting the voters choose them. Republicans can design “safe districts” for Republicans, even if as a byproduct they also create some safe Democratic districts (from the cards thrown into the discard pile).
As Grimm notes, Democratic lawyers and their consultants have been guilty of the same sin in other states, including Florida when Democrats were in the majority. California was another example until a voter initiative moved the responsibility for redistricting to an independent commission not controlled by the Legislature. Grimm suggests Florida may need to do the same.
Full Article: Wanted: Honest Algorithms For Voter Redistricting – InformationWeek.