Decide who represents you

Waldo Proffitt
Herald Tribune
Jan 30, 2010

The best news of the year was grossly underplayed by most of the Florida press -- print, television, bloggers.

So, in case you missed it, here it is:

The two redistricting initiatives -- one for Congress and one for the state Legislature -- will be on the ballot in the Nov. 2 election.

Florida's secretary of state certified that each had received the required number of voter signatures. They had earlier been approved by the state Supreme Court as meeting the other legal requirements.

That's the good news. The bad news is twofold. They will not become part of the state constitution unless approved by 60 percent of the voters, and they will be fought fiercely by legislators anxious to hang on to their seats, and by special interest groups, business or otherwise, who want to protect the advantages they enjoy under the existing system. It will be one of the nastiest, costliest campaigns you have ever seen.

Why? Because if these amendments pass, voters will be able to decide who represents them in Congress and in the Florida House and Senate. Under the present arrangement, state and Florida legislators pick the voters they want.

They do this by gerrymandering, that is, by drawing lines to define districts favorable to them or their friends. Gerrymandering has a long and dishonorable history in this country, going back to a newspaper article written in 1812 to describe electoral boundaries drawn during the administration of an early Massachusetts governor, Elbridge Gerry.

Packing districts

The technique is quite simple. You pack as many supporters of your opponent as possible into a district, conceding that district to your opponent by an overwhelming margin, but leaving adjacent districts with a comfortable margin of your supporters. Computers have made this so easy, it can be done by moderately competent high school students.

But, with or without computers, gerrymandering or something similar has been going on for more than 200 years in this country and long before that in the "rotten boroughs" of England. In Florida, the gerrymandering was done for many years by Democrats and now by Republicans.

Under either arrangement, the results are the same: The people sitting in your state or national legislatures do not fairly represent the voters of Florida.

The most easily documented example of that truth is that there were, as of the last general election, 4,722,076 registered Democrats and 4,064,301 Republicans in Florida -- about 658,000 more Democrats than Republicans.

Yet, our delegation in the U.S. House of Representatives numbers 15 Republicans and 10 Democrats.

In the Florida Legislature, in the House of Representatives there are 77 Republicans and 43 Democrats, while in the Senate there are 26 Republicans and 14 Democrats.

Districts are redrawn after every decennial census. They are redrawn by the Legislature, whose first priority is to protect incumbents -- an undertaking in which it has been spectacularly successful. In the last six years, there have been 420 state House or Senate seats on the ballot, and only three incumbents have been defeated. Likewise, incumbents running for re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives are seldom defeated.

Nonpartisan proposals

Now, opponents of these proposed amendments assert and will continue to assert vigorously that the purpose of the proposed amendments is to elect more Democrats. In truth, the purpose is to elect legislators who better represent the voters, and that will be the result if they are approved. Quite likely, more Democrats and independents will be elected simply because district lines will be fairly drawn and incumbents will not be so thoroughly protected.

But the organization most active in promoting the amendments, Fair Districts Florida, is nonpartisan and its leadership includes many prominent Republicans. It is difficult to really believe in government of the people, by the people and for the people without believing that the cards should not be stacked against giving people an honest choice in picking their leaders. I believe that many Democrats, like me, would have supported amendments like these 40 years ago when Democrats were in charge of gerrymandering Florida.

And, I think, many Florida Repubicans will support these amendments now simply because they believe gerrymandering does not advance the cause of good government in this Republic.

I want to stress the point that there will be a rough campaign against the amendments by people who were made rich or powerful by gerrymandering and who will have access to millions of dollars to try to preserve it.

There will be a flood of at least misleading and perhaps untruthful advertising trying to persuade you to vote against the amendments.

I write far in advance of the election to warn you: Be not snookered. Voting for these amendments is one of the best things you will be able to do this year to elect men and women who are running for office because they want to help you.

Waldo Proffitt is the former editor of the Herald-Tribune.
E-mail: waldoproffitt@verizon.net

This story appeared in print on page A15

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