What we think: Give voters a choice

OrlandoSentinel.com
Monday Apr 20, 2009

Organizers of last week's "Tea Party" protests billed them as a bid for participants to "take back" their country. Floridians have another, more practical opportunity to take back their state -- one that doesn't involve tea bags. This one is a statewide campaign to restore some integrity to the now-corrupt system of drawing legislative and congressional districts.

Florida lawmakers go through the redistricting process every 10 years, supposedly to adjust the boundary lines to population changes revealed by the census. But the party in control of the Legislature seizes the chance to design districts that serve only to protect its majority.

Wielding elaborate databases on voter behavior and sophisticated computers, the party in charge creates as many districts as possible with a majority of voters inclined to support its candidates. They corral likely opponents into as few districts as possible. In a way, lawmakers wind up choosing their voters, instead of letting voters choose them. Because this process places partisan politics above all else, it often leads to freakishly shaped districts that divide communities with common interests.

Look at state Senate District 27. Shaped much like a barbell, it runs through five counties and 115 miles in South Florida to take in its 400,000 residents.

Look at Seminole County, one of Florida's more compact counties. It has a population smaller than what's called for in a U.S. House district, but it's divided among four representatives.

This rigged and ragged approach to redistricting helps explain why Republicans have kept their strong majorities in the Florida Legislature and in the state's congressional delegation, despite a slight edge in voter registration for Democrats. When Democrat Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential race in Florida, no incumbent Republican legislators lost their seats.

Naturally, those who support maintaining the current system of gerrymandering districts portray efforts to change it as a power grab for Democrats. But the redistricting process in Florida has always been manipulated by whichever party holds the majority. When Democrats controlled the Legislature, they drew districts to benefit their candidates (and we were unhappy about it then, too). If given the chance, they'd do it again, unless voters change the system. A group of state leaders, chaired by Republican lawyer Thom Rumberger, has mounted a statewide petition drive to put on next year's ballot two proposed constitutional amendments.

The amendments -- one for legislative districts and one for congressional districts -- would bar legislators from drawing lines that favor an incumbent or political party, or disfavor a minority group. Wherever possible, legislators would be required to create compact districts that follow existing political or geographical boundaries.

Opponents have argued that redistricting plans adopted under the proposed rules would lead to a flurry of lawsuits, but Mr. Rumberger says litigation has been routine under the current process. He also says the standards called for under the reform have been well-defined in state court decisions. As both a participant and a close observer in previous rounds of redistricting, he speaks with credibility.

Organizers don't need tea bags -- they need almost 700,000 valid signatures from registered voters for each amendment by Feb. 1 to put it on next year's ballot. The signatures need to be certified, but organizers believe they are already about a third of the way to their goal. Anyone interested in supporting this worthy effort can read more about it at the campaigns' Web site, fairdistrictsflorida.org.

We hope it succeeds so Floridians can fix this broken system.
Copyright © 2009, Orlando Sentinel