Action Center

End the Gerrymandering for Good

Miami Herald editorial, January 31, 2010

To look at some of Florida's legislative and congressional districts, like this map of state Senate District 27, for instance, you might conclude that they were designed by a contortionist.

There are dozens of such contortions statewide, leaving voters to wonder why their state representative or member of Congress lives hundreds of miles from them. These districts -- zigging and zagging across cities, leaping over vast uninhabited tracts to connect two distant communities -- are created every 10 years by whatever party controls the state Legislature.

It's an equal opportunity abuse of voters' rights to fair representation practiced by both parties in an effort to cement their own re-elections. In November, voters will get the chance to change this assault on democracy by adopting Amendments 5 and 6 to the Florida Constitution. Amendment 5 establishes standards for how legislative districts may be redrawn; 6 does the same for Florida's congressional districts. New districts are drawn by the Legislature every 10 years after the U.S. Census.

There are plenty of examples of legislators' abuse of their redistricting power. In 1992, then-state Senate President Gwen Margolis, a Democrat, redrew the 22nd congressional district, a narrow strip of coastal cities in Palm Beach and Broward counties. She extended it into her northeast Miami-Dade Senate district so she could challenge incumbent, E. Clay Shaw Jr. She lost. Others were more fortunate.

In 2002, then-Florida House Majority Leader Mario Diaz-Balart, a Republican, chaired the redistricting committee. Florida got three new congressional districts after the 2000 Census. Mr. Diaz-Balart's committee drew new congressional District 25 around his state House district lines, extending it south to a portion of Monroe County and west through the Everglades to eastern Collier County to capture enough GOP voters.

To illustrate how gerrymandering can create safe minority seats, U.S. Rep. Corinne Brown's District 3 begins in Jacksonville, slides diagonally west to Gainesville where it widens to include Palatka to the east and then drops south to pick up Apopka and western Orlando. It encompasses very poor and middle-class black communities as well as a few wealthy white areas. It is anything but compact or filled with voters with similar community interests and goals.
Such gerrymandering distorts the political leanings of Florida voters, too, making races less competitive. On the face it would appear that the state is overwhelmingly Republican. Yet 42 percent of Florida's registered voters are Democrats; 36 percent are Republicans and 22 percent are independent. Taking the rigging out of redistricting and reapportionment would give voters real choices closer to home come election time.

The nonprofit group FairDistricts.org, which includes the League of Women Voters and has the support of the NAACP, has gathered the necessary voters' signatures to put Amendments 5 and 6 on the statewide ballot.

The amendments say districts also must be contiguous and, unless otherwise required (by, say, topography), compact, as equal in population as feasible and must make use of existing city, county and geographical boundaries.

The wording on protecting minorities' voting opportunities is stronger than even in the federal Voting Rights Act.

Amendments 5 and 6 will give control of elections back to Florida's voters, where it belongs.