The League of Women Voters of Florida, National Council of La Raza, and Florida Common Cause said Thursday they have put forward a Senate redistricting plan that fully complies with and implements the Florida Supreme Court’s March 9th opinion.
This new redistricting plan comes on the heels of a second map drawn by the Florida Senate, after the Supreme Court rejected original maps which they said were “rife with objective indicators of improper intent.”
“The Court gave the Senate a second chance, but the Senate just did exactly what it has done in every redistricting cycle – drawn districts to protect themselves and their political allies rather than protecting the voting rights of all Floridians. That is why we felt compelled to propose an alternative plan,” said President Deirdre Macnab of the League of Women Voters of Florida.
Disregarding much of what the Court wrote, on March 27, 2012 the Senate designed a new plan that recreates the same problems, the Coalition said. In the Senate’s new plan, all non-term-limited incumbents are still guaranteed their own districts in which to run for reelection. The Coalition based its new plan on the Court’s interpretation of the FairDistricts Amendments and used the Senate’s original plan as a starting point. The result is a plan that avoids political favoritism like that evident in the Senate’s map.
The Coalition said that examples of favoritism on the Senate’s part included, an eleven mile tentacle that reaches up between two districts to grab the home of an incumbent; splitting the African American population in Daytona into two districts to effectively eliminate its voting strength; the last minute rearrangement of central Florida districts to ensure that prominent Republicans would not have to run against each other and an eleven mile tentacle that reaches up between two districts to grab the home of an incumbent;.
“Our proposed Senate map reflects the values of Floridians who by their votes have demanded a principled way to ensure that all voters can participate in the political process, have their votes matter and have their voices heard by political leaders,” said Eric Rodriguez of National Council of La Raza.
Peter Butzin, President of Common Cause Florida agreed: “We hope that the Coalition’s alternative Senate plan will prove useful to the Court in demonstrating how a constitutional plan could and should have been drawn to comply with the Court’s opinion. We have complied with every constitutional requirement. We have scrupulously utilized existing boundaries, and by using counties as building blocks for districts we have kept more cities and counties whole than does the Legislature.”
See the Coalition’s new Senate plan HERE.
