A research consultant expects congressional and state redistricting plans from the Florida Senate will face a legal challenge based on minority representation and the Fair Voting Act.
If that happens, the state’s elections supervisors will find themselves even further behind as they prepare for 2012 elections, and voters may not know until the last minute who the candidates are.
“While (redistricting) looks easy, it isn’t. When you lay in the legal considerations, it’s even more difficult,” said consultant John Libby of American Public Dialogue Inc., who has helped with drawing districts for St. Johns County and who has submitted several proposals for state districting.
“You’ve got to adhere to the Voting Rights Act or the federal Department of Justice will challenge your plan like they did to Texas. … I really think the Senate plan will get challenged.”
That’s not heartening news for the state’s 67 supervisors of elections who are in a sit-and-wait mode as politicians redraw voting districts at the congressional, state and local level for 2012 elections.
“I’m on hold,” said Vicky Oakes, St. Johns County supervisor of elections who is hoping by the end of the year to at least know what the districts for county commissioners and the school board will look like.
When it comes to the state and congressional districts, that process will take even longer, and a court challenge would throw another spanner in the time table.
House plan due out
On Tuesday, the Florida House is scheduled to release its redistricting plan. However, Senate and House leaders have announced an agreement whereby the Senate won’t draw lines for House redistricting and vice versa, said Libby.
That could mean the House will only come out with one plan instead of the three that they had discussed. And that may make the process even more frustrating for the thousands who have spoken out at legislative hearings and for those who sent in proposals for the redistricting, which is required every 10 years after the U.S. Census is conducted.
Libby described the 160 plans sent in from the public as a “smorgasbord” and said the best map may come from taking the best elements from “as many as a half dozen plans and consolidate (them) into one plan.”
One of the plans submitted had four Hispanic majority minority districts; that’s one more than the Senate plan and could lead to a court challenge, said Libby.
‘Give and take’ time
Redistricting is always a matter of “give and take,” Libby said, adding redistricting in Florida would probably be easier if the state were shaped like “North Dakota, South Dakota or Nebraska, a shape that’s nice and square.”
It’s not so easy to draw compact districts in a state that’s been described as being shaped like an arm where it’s bent at the elbow, he said. Adding to the problem of drawing compact districts that are contiguous is the state’s water element including rivers, creeks and the Intracoastal Waterway.
“It makes it difficult to draw what people expect from the Fair District Amendment,” he said, noting in one case a proposed congressional district that looked to be a perfect block in fact had no bridge across a river, which meant it was a non-contiguous district and thus didn’t fit the requirements.
In St. Johns County the big local issue has been growth along State Road 210 and that’s affecting the makeup of both the school board and county commission districts.
“District 1 had to lose a lot of population and thus a lot of land mass,” Libby said. The growth of the Hamptons and St. Johns Golf and Country Club meant they couldn’t be left in just one district and “that has been the real issue that has driven some of the lines. Which other districts do you put that in?”
Even more complicated is drawing the lines for districts for the Florida House and Senate and the Congressional districts. Some longtime Congressional representatives, including Rep. John Mica and Rep. Cliff Stearns, have been drawn out of their districts.
For both incumbents and challengers, the push is on to know just where district lines will be drawn and what areas they will include. That process involves decisions and reviews by the Florida legislature, attorney general and supreme court as well as a review by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The state’s 67 supervisors of elections are feeling the pain.
They are the ones tasked with making the election process work and even if the redistricting process is completed on scheduled. Election officials will have less than two weeks to adjust the records of Florida’s voters before the first absentee ballots must be mailed for the Aug. 14 primary.
Once district lines are known, supervisors must redraw precinct lines, establish new polling locations, get approval for the precincts and polling locations from the county commission at public hearings, verify the accuracy and notify voters of the changes.
Computers will make the job easier, but there’s still a great deal of checking and rechecking required, Oakes said.
“The Board of County Commissioners and the School Board hopefully will finalize their plans this year by Dec. 31,” Oakes said. Speculating about how the legislative and congressional districts will look is a waste of time until a decision is made.
“I can look at plans until I’m blue in the face and until the point when they actually adopt it … I can’t do anything until they send us the files,” Oakes said. “The session ends March 9. Hopefully they’ll get us something after. This is a very political process.”