Florida's redistricting method an insult to democracy

James McCartney
The Bradenton Herald
Sunday Jul 26, 2009

Of all the monstrous disgraces of Florida politics that so often make this state the laughingstock of the nation, few equal the way politicians of both political parties have carved up state legislative and U.S. congressional districts in a manner that insults the cause of democracy itself.

We Americans often talk about democracy in our preaching to the world as though we have perfected it at home. But in many ways we haven’t.

The political jackals have been at large in our Legislature in Tallahassee every 10 years when it’s come time to draw district lines after a national census.

Self-interest driven party politics, not fair democratic representation, have been the result. Some districts are not merely weird, they are grotesque.

You cannot argue that Florida today has representative government.

It doesn’t.

In last year’s election in Florida, 42 percent of registered voters were Democrats, 36 percent Republicans, 19 percent had no affiliation, 3 percent represented minor parties.

But by manipulating district lines after the last census, Republicans have managed to gain control of two thirds of the state Legislature and 60 percent of the congressional delegation.

This is not democracy.

But there is some good news. There is a realistic possibility for reform. A bipartisan petition drive to change the rules by amending the Florida Constitution has picked up steam. It is sponsored by several good government organizations under the banner “Fair Districts Florida.”

Leaders of that campaign say the drive to get proposals for change on the November ballot next year is going well.

“We’re well over 70 percent of signatures we need,” says Ellen Freidin, a Miami lawyer who is chair of the campaign. “The prospects of success are great.”

If proposals for change go on the ballot, however, 60 percent of Florida voters will have to approve and that may not be easy.

The problem: Under the present system the Legislature has had control of defining both legislative and congressional district lines.

Thus, the party that controlled the Legislature has been able to draw lines designed to preserve its incumbents and exclude the opposition.

In 2004, for example, not a single incumbent in the Legislature or congressional delegation was defeated. More than 70 percent of the legislative races had only one major party candidate and of 142 seats up for re-election 103 were uncontested by a major party.

This pattern is a result of manipulative redistricting.

In effect, hundreds of thousands of voters have been disenfranchised.

My favorite example of weird redistricting is House District 55, which runs in a narrow strip from southeast St. Petersburg across the Sunshine Skyway through parts of Manatee County and all the way down to Sarasota County.

An earlier effort to reform the redistricting system got shot down by the Florida Supreme Court in 2006. That effort called for establishing an independent commission to draw lines.

The new effort takes a different tack. It simply calls for amending the Constitution to forbid district lines from being drawn to favor or disfavor an incumbent or political party. Districts must be compact and contiguous and as equal in population as feasible. They may not be drawn to deny racial or language minorities full participation.

This approach has been cleared with the Florida Supreme Court and the court has said it’s okay. “Legally, it’s a done deal,” according to Ellen Freidin.

It will take two amendments, one for legislative districts, the other for congressional districts.

To get the amendments on next year’s ballots will require 676,811 valid signatures, but the Fair Elections campaign wants to gather at least 850,000 to make sure it has enough. They’ve set September as a deadline.

Some prominent Republicans are supporting the drive. An example is E. Thom Rumberger, a prominent Tallahassee lawyer and retired circuit judge who was chairman of Florida Lawyers for Bush (the elder) in 1988 and 1992. There are others.

A program aimed at providing information about the campaign — and raising money to support it — is planned at Holley Hall in Sarasota on Wednesday evening. Ellen Freiden and state Rep. Keith Fitzgerald, a Democrat, are to speak.

A co-sponsor is Forum Truth, a non-profit citizen’s organization of which (disclosure) I am a board member.

Unfortunately, although Florida has become a political giant as the fourth most populace state, it is a backward state politically.

Another problem is Florida’s part-time Legislature, which virtually guarantees unrepresentative government because only those wealthy enough to take a couple of months off can afford to serve.

Bluntly, the state has permitted egregious undemocratic principles to prevail.

We can do better. And the campaign to reform redistricting gives us an opportunity to start.

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James McCartney, a Holmes Beach resident, is a former Washington columnist for Knight Ridder Newspapers. He writes this column for The Bradenton Herald.