Devious Dull Republicans in the Florida State House of Representatives want to choose their voters through gerrymandering.
They have contempt for democracy and traditional values of comity and courtesy in the legislature.
Their record is execrable, and their latest overt acts of discrimination against minorities could be overturned by state or federal courts.
If this redistricting is not overturned by courts, it could mean that St. Augustine and St. Augustine Beach will no longer be in the district currently encumbered by CYNTHIA WARD STEVENSON, whose father was a Volusia County Commission who bailed on attending the Canvassing Board in 2000 because of his vacation plans.
In her father's spirit, cynical rebarbative Republican reprobate CYNDI STEVENSON was a no-show, not voting, in 2018 when the House approved by one vote the "Whiskey and Wheaties" bill that would have allowed hard liquor sales in grocery stores. Fortunately, Florida's Republican then-Governor RICHARD LYNN SCOTT vetoed this bad bill. STEVENSON never produced her official phone bill GPS records that would have shown her precise geographic location when she inexplicably failed to vote on a bill that passed by one vote.
The redistricting would leave STEVENSON in a new District 17, tiny in size but large in population, containing the areas of northwest St. Johns County.
Full disclosure: On May 5, 2021, I filed to run as a Democrat for the old District 17 seat that is currently encumbered by louche lachrymose developer doormat CYNTHIA STEVENSON.
Here's cynical snooty CYNDI STEVENSON with St. Johns County Republican Executive Committee Chair ROY ALAIMO, JR, the homophobe who long served on the Planning and Zoning Agency and publicly raises campaign money with appeals to group hatred, including opposition to the LGBTQIA+ Pride Proclamation that got the County sued in Federal Court in 2021.
From News4Jax/News Service of Florida:
Florida House Republicans pass redrawn district maps
TALLAHASSEE – The Florida House on Wednesday approved new legislative districts over the objections of Democrats, who anticipate legal challenges about minority representation and how the lines were drawn.
House members voted 77-39 along party lines to approve the plan (SJR 100), which likely will allow Republicans to maintain control of the Legislature into the 2030s. The plan will go back to the Senate for a final vote before being sent to the Florida Supreme Court for review.
But while lawmakers are close to finishing state House and Senate maps as part of the once-a-decade reapportionment process, new congressional maps remain unresolved.
Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday sought an advisory opinion from the state Supreme Court about his effort to revamp what is now Congressional District 5, which sprawls from Jacksonville to west of Tallahassee. The district is held by Congressman Al Lawson, a Black Democrat, and was designed to help with minority representation.
The Senate has approved a proposed congressional map that would follow the same general design of the current District 5. The House has not produced a congressional map, but House Speaker Chris Sprowls, R-Palm Harbor, said Wednesday that DeSantis’ request was “appropriate.”
“I think it’s actually very helpful for us to understand that, and the more clarity we can have on that point, prior to addressing the congressional map, means that we are going to have a legally compliant map,” Sprowls said.
The new legislative and congressional districts need to be in place before qualifying for this year’s elections begins June 13.
House Democrats argued Tuesday and Wednesday they were unable to offer alternative maps to the House legislative proposal. They said they were offered little time or input in the redistricting process, despite having seats on committees that worked on the maps.
“We were told that the maps were drawn by somebody. I stand here today, and I still don’t know who was in the room,” Rep. Joe Geller, D-Aventura, said. “We’re told that counsel is shown on the House website. And yes, it is. Three sets of law firms. That’s a fact. It’s there. Which of them, and who from them, was substantively in the room when the policy decisions were made, I’m not clear on.”
House Redistricting Chairman Rep. Tom Leek, R-Ormond Beach, defended the process, saying the House didn’t employ “outside or political operatives,” which was an issue a decade ago.
Leek also admonished members who said they were unable to participate, as the Redistricting Committee spent hours on training and questions on a redistricting website, which drew 91 proposals from Floridians, including 20 for the new House districts.
“Not a single alternative map was submitted (by House Democrats),” Leek said.
“This is not the same process we had, you know, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, or 30 years ago,” Leek added, nodding toward 2010 constitutional amendments — known as the Fair Districts Amendments — that were aimed at preventing gerrymandering.
“This is a new process,” Leek continued. “We have the benefit of our prior history.”
The reapportionment process occurs after U.S. census data is released. But the data was late this year because of the coronavirus pandemic, which shortened the amount of time lawmakers had to put together the maps. Lawmakers discarded the past practice of holding public meetings across the state to seek input.
The House crafted its own lines while signing off on new district layouts for the 40 Senate seats, which were approved Jan. 20 by the Senate. The plan has to go back to the Senate for a final vote because the Senate has not approved the new House districts.
House Republicans currently hold 78 of the 120 seats. The new map would carve 71 districts where voters supported former Republican President Donald Trump in 2020 and 49 that favored Democratic President Joe Biden.
Minority Leader Evan Jenne, D-Hollywood, termed the House Republicans’ response to Democratic questions on the maps “a song and dance.”
“I have a feeling people in the federal courts will probably have a little bit of a different view, once that tap dancing occurs in their courtroom,” Jenne said Tuesday. “But at the same time, their refusal to answer any questions, specific questions, really, I think goes to show that we really don’t know what happened and where these maps were crafted, how they were crafted and whom they were crafted by.”
An issue for Democrats is that the House map maintains 18 protected Black districts and 12 protected Hispanic districts.
Democrats contend benchmarks used by the House failed to address increases in Black, Hispanic and Creole-speaking residents over the past decade.
“In 2012, after the 2010 census, there were maps drawn that provided an opportunity for 30 minority individuals to be a part of this process,” Rep. Geraldine Thompson, D-Windermere, said. “Today, in 2022, after the 2020 census, we still have only 30. The minimum that is required. If you believe that a quota is what we have to do, if you believe that a quota is what’s appropriate, a quota is the floor, not the ceiling.”
However, Rep. Randy Fine, R-Brevard County, called the minority population increases “irrelevant” because in terms of overall percentages the Black population remained just over 17 percent while Hispanics grew from 23 percent to 26 percent.
“So why hasn’t it changed? Well, it also matters where you move and where you live,” he said. “See it’s not the same 30 seats today. We’ve talked about that before. There was a primarily Hispanic seat down there in Dade County. It went away. You want to know why? Because while the state grew by 15 percent, Dade County only grew by 8 percent.”
Copyright 2022 The News Service of Florida. All rights reserved.
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From Miami Herald:
House advances first redistricting map, but Democrats have many questions
BY MARY ELLEN KLAS HERALD/TIMES TALLAHASSEE BUREAU UPDATED JANUARY 23, 2022 6:21 PM
The Florida House Subcommittee on Legislative Redistricting voted 13-7 on Friday, Jan. 21, to advance the proposed House map to the full committee. The configuration is expected to produce 71 Republican districts and 49 Democratic seats. FLORIDA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. FLORIDAREDISTRICTING.GOV TALLAHASSEE Democrats could gain as many as seven seats in the Florida House of Representatives and Republicans could retain a solid majority under a redistricting map approved Friday along partisan lines by a state House subcommittee. But despite their numeric gains, the proposal was criticized by Democrats who questioned several of the decisions made by staff, including why they did not maximize minority districts when it appeared shifts in population would allow for it. ““The state House map before you today is a constitutionally compliant work,’’ said state Rep. Cord Byrd, a Neptune Beach Republican who chairs the subcommittee. He said the plan creates 18 constitutionally protected Black districts and 12 protected Hispanic districts while doing a better job of keeping communities whole than the current map adopted by legislators a decade ago. TOP VIDEOS WATCH MORE × Carrie Meek leaves her mark through public service, says her son Kendrick The House Subcommittee on Legislative Redistricting voted 13-7 to send the map to the full committee. No amendments were offered and there was little debate. But unlike 2012, when the Legislature’s House redistricting map was the only one to escape being challenged in court, the House appeared to be coming under the same criticism the Florida Senate has faced this year as it passed its state Senate and congressional maps on Thursday. “Given the growth of Black and brown people in the State of Florida, is it possible there could have been more access seats created to have complete representation of those populations, or better representation of those populations?” asked Rep. Kelly Skidmore, D-West Palm Beach. The answer, said Leda Kelly, the staff director of the House Redistricting Committee, is that in areas where they saw specific population growth among minorities, such as in the Orlando region, they did a so-called functional analysis to make sure they were maximizing minority voting strength. But elsewhere in the state, she said, if there wasn’t an existing minority district to protect, “it’s inappropriate to do it.” Rep. Susan Valdes, a Tampa Democrat, also focused on the lack of data provided to analyze where to protect minority voters. “We were provided 30 districts in which we were provided data sets. Why wasn’t it provided on all the other 90 seats?” she asked. Byrd answered: “We only perform functional analysis on the 30 protected seats. We don’t perform it on all the seats.” THE HOUSE’S PROCESS Several court orders over the last decade led to revisions to both the state Senate and congressional maps and those rulings now shape the contours of how far legislators in both the House and Senate can go to draw districts that give them a partisan or incumbent advantage. In an effort to avoid another lawsuit, Republicans tried to tightly control the redistricting process, erecting barriers to public input to avoid being accused of allowing partisans to infiltrate the process as they did a decade ago. They also refrained from reporting the partisan breakdown of all the districts in the maps. According to an analysis of the House’s proposed map, using 2020 general elections data, The Center for Urban Research at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York found that the number of guaranteed Republican seats in the 120-member House would drop from 78 to 71 if the 2020 election were held today, including three Republican-leaning swing districts. The number of Democratic seats would rise from 42 to 49, including four Democrat-leaning swing districts. Voter advocacy groups, such as LatinoJustice PRLDEF and the League of Women Voters of Florida, accused House leaders and staff of failing to do the kind of in-depth analysis needed to ensure they were drawing all the districts needed to protect minority voting strength, as required by the Fair District standards of the state Constitution. “The Florida legislators’ proposed maps ignore dramatic Latino population growth over the last decade,’’ said Miranda Galindo, senior counsel at LatinoJustice PRLDEF. She also said the state’s redistricting process was inaccessible for non-English speakers, especially because the committee failed to provide translation services and virtual testimony during the pandemic. “The end result has been a dilution of Latino political power,” she said. Despite the numeric gains for them in the House map, Democrats had criticisms. Matt Isbell, a Democrat redistricting expert, called the House map a “modest gerrymander.” He pointed to a series of decisions that he believes are signs that House leaders and staff made choices intentionally intended to benefit Republicans: ▪ In Jacksonville, the map packs Black voters into two districts when it could draw a third Black-access seat in Southwest Duval County, in increasingly diverse suburbs. ▪ In Tampa Bay, the map creates House District 62, a sprawling Black-majority district that links communities in South Pinellas by crossing Tampa Bay into Hillsborough County. A better alternative, Isbell argues, would be to keep the current House District 70 that stretches from South Pinellas to Sarasota, a community that is rapidly becoming minority majority, and create a second minority district along Interstate 75 in eastern Hillsborough County. But House staff analyst Jason Poreda defended the proposed HD 62 because it keeps the district in two counties, rather than sprawling across four counties. ▪ And in Alachua County, Isbell said Gainesville and the region is split three ways to avoid creating two Democratic seats. Isbell commends the House for keeping North Miami-Dade’s Haitian community together in two districts, similar to the current map. And in Orlando, the map makes no effort “to short-circuit” Democratic growth. Instead of limiting the number of Democratic districts, it increases them, including making one additional Hispanic district in the region, he said. Rep. Marie Paule Woodson, a Hollywood Democrat, asked why the map split up Miami Gardens, the largest Black city in the state. Byrd said there is still time to change that. Woodson also pressed Byrd about why they hadn’t used additional Census data, such as the American Communities Survey, “to create a Haitian-Creole opportunity district” in South Florida. He answered that the courts require them to use only the Census data, not the ACS data, which does not have language-based data at the block level. DEMOCRATS HAVE MORE QUESTIONS Rep. Kevin Chambliss, a Homestead Democrat, asked if the number of protected minority districts changed or stayed the same when the proposed map is compared to the map drawn in 2012. Byrd said he didn’t know and staff would have to get back to him with an answer. And Rep. Dan Daley, D-Sunrise, asked why Byrd and staff hadn’t provided answers to a detailed set of questions he presented to them in a Jan. 7 letter, asking for specifics on how and why they arrived at the minority districts they drew. The parade of questions left Democrats unsatisfied. “I do find it really alarming that we were unable to get answers” to those questions, said Rep. Kristen Aston Arrington, D-Kissimmee in voting against the map. Cecile Scoon, president of the League of Women Voters of Florida, criticized the committee for a lack of transparency. “There was not one chart to show any percentage of what was the decrease of the voting age population of Hispanics, and or African Americans and I think that really tells you what the focus has been,’’ she said. “Where is the evidence of their analysis in minority districts? Where is the racially-polarized voting data?” And where is the data showing how many citizens versus non-citizens are in each district? “Our Florida Constitution does not tell you that you cannot look at other sources of information,’’ she said. “Our Constitution tells you to do the job.” Byrd urged committee members to keep working on alternatives. “There’s still time for work on the map once it goes to the full committee,’’ he said. Mary Ellen Klas can be reached at meklas@miamiherald.com and @MaryEllenKlas This story was originally published January 21, 2022 7:00 PM. MARY ELLEN KLAS Mary Ellen Klas is the state Capitol bureau chief for the Miami Herald, where she covers government and politics and focuses on investigative and accountability reporting. In 2018-19, Mary Ellen was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and was named the 2019 Murrey Marder Nieman Fellow in Watchdog Journalism. In 2018, she won the Sunshine Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. The Herald’s statehouse bureau is a joint operation with the Tampa Bay Times’ statehouse staff. Please support her work with a digital subscription. You can reach her at meklas@miamiherald.com and on Twitter @MaryEllenKlas.
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article257595598.html#storylink=cpy
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