It's time to tackle dirty little secret of politics

Scott Maxwell
Orlando Sentinel
Wednesday Mar 18, 2009

TAKING NAMES

If you live in Orlando and find it annoying that your "local" representative in Congress lives 140 miles away in Jacksonville, listen up.

If you're tired of getting ballots that don't offer you any real choices, pay attention.

And most importantly, if you think voters should pick their politicians — rather than politicians hand-picking their voters — I've got good news for you.

It is time to rise up and reform!

The issue is redistricting. And it's the dirty little secret of modern politics.

Right now, politicians get to draw their own districts most any way they want. And boy, do they.

They've turned this state into a psychopath's jigsaw puzzle, with misshapen legislative and congressional districts that split communities in two and can be longer than 100 miles and yet as narrow as a few hundred yards.

It's all designed to stifle competition and stack the deck before you even get to the polls.

Want proof that our current districts are distorted and contorted? Well, consider the following about these U.S. House members:

•Republican John Mica lives more than 130 miles from many of the residents he represents. Much of the congressman's district is actually in Flagler and St. Johns counties. In fact, just about the only part of Orange County included in Mica's district is the swath of land around his Winter Park home.

•Democrat Corrine Brown's long and narrow district, stretching from Orlando to Jacksonville, is so stacked with Democrats — by a margin of 3-to-1 — that a Republican would have a better chance of getting elected president of MoveOn.org.

•Republican Ginny Brown-Waite's 5th District is so big and unwieldy, she could drive 250 miles and visit only seven of the eight counties in her district.

Thanks to carefully drawn lines, not a single congressional or legislative incumbent lost a re-election bid in 2004.

So why are our districts so whacked-out?

Because politicians played games with them.

Just ask Tom Feeney. He was state House speaker the last time the Legislature drew new districts. And surprise, surprise: Feeney's peers decided to create a new district — right around Tom's house.

But the controlling party did more than just gift-wrap Feeney a congressional district that year.

It also stuffed so many Democrats into Brown's district that there were enough Republican voters left over to give GOP candidates the advantage in all of the others. Even though Democrats outnumbered Republicans overall in Central Florida, Republicans outnumbered Democrats in five of the six Central Florida districts.

Both parties at fault

Both parties have tried to play these games.

Democrats used comparable moves back when they ran the show. And it stunk then, too.

"It happens in dark rooms at night with the computers," said Thom Rumberger, a Tallahassee attorney and Republican Party patriarch who was once part of the system he now wants to reform. "Both sides do it. That's why I'm trying to make this an issue of fairness rather than partisanship."

That's also why Rumberger is leading a bipartisan coalition that wants to give voters the chance to vote on fair-districting as a constitutional amendment next year.

The premise of the amendment: Florida's political districts must be compact, using geographic boundaries that can't be stretched far and wide for political purposes. And if legislators ignore residents' wishes and try to do themselves political favors, they could end up in court.

Who fought change?

So who's fighting the effort to inject common sense into our democracy?

Well, in the past, you did.

At least your tax money did. That was thanks to then-House Speaker Allan Bense, who devoted $50,000 in taxpayer money to a successful court fight to keep an earlier version of the amendment off the ballot.

Fortunately, the fair-district proponents persevered. And now they're back.

Rumberger is sure they'll have opposition again — possibly from lobbyists who will "empty their pockets" to do anything nervous incumbents ask.

But even the slickest of campaigns will have a tough time persuading voters to reject fair-districting. This common-sense approach to democracy is way overdue.

For more information on this movement and the petition needed to get the fair-district amendment on the ballot, visit fairdistrictsflorida.org.

From the Orlando Sentinel