Fightbrews over voting districts

Three ballot questions. Two lawsuits (and counting). One serious headache for voters.

Redistricting, the subject of three constitutional amendments headed for the November election ballot, is never a pretty process.

Every 10 years, the state Legislature redraws Florida's legislative and Congressional district boundaries to reflect the latest Census data. But the results tend equally to reflect the political ambitions of those wielding the pen.

It may sound like the ultimate insider's game, but voters have a lot at stake. How lawmakers divvy up the electorate into legislative districts, for example, can factor heavily into which party controls the Legislature, which policies it adopts and how it spends the state's money.

The more partisan the redistricting process - and it is always partisan - the less likely that Florida's state and congressional representatives will represent its true politics, said Lance deHaven Smith, a political scientist at Florida State University.

"Redistricting is intended to make the Legislature a closer reflection of the political makeup of the state," deHaven Smith said. "But the present system protects incumbents and polarizes the Legislature."

As a result, he said, ideology drives more of the Legislature's agenda, while Florida's sizable population of independent voters, "for all practical purposes, is not represented. It also tends to create tension between the executive branch and the legislative branch, because the governor runs statewide while the Legislature, in this case, is more conservative than the electorate."

The next round of redistricting won't start until late 2011. But with competing groups vying to change the rules of the game, it is already messier than usual.

On one side of the debate is FairDistrictsFlorida.org, a citizens initiative responsible for Amendments 5 and 6. Backed by teacher and service employee unions as well as the Florida NAACP and ACLU, Fair Districts claims its proposals would end gerrymandering.

Congressional and legislative districts could not be drawn to favor or disfavor incumbents under the Fair Districts plan, and could not diminish opportunities for minority voters to elect candidates of their choice.

Districts would have to be contiguous and compact wherever possible, following pre-existing city and county boundaries.

Fair Districts collected 1.7 million signatures to add its proposals to the 2010 ballot. Honorary co-chairs of the left-leaning group include former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham and former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. Gov. Charlie Crist, now a no-party candidate for U.S. Senate, also has endorsed the amendment.

But state lawmakers - primarily Republicans - are fighting it, claiming its mandates cannot be accomplished legally.

"It's mathematically impossible to do what they describe," said state Sen. Mike Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, who steered a third redistricting amendment through the Legislature this spring.

Redistricting automatically favors one candidate over another, he said, and the amendments threaten existing minority districts, both by requiring compactness and by banning consideration of incumbents.

Haridopolos argues his proposal, Amendment 7, "clarifies" the Fair Districts proposals by enshrining protections for "communities of interest," including minority voters.

The proposal won votes this spring from two key African-American Democrats: Senate Minority Leader Al Lawson of Tallahassee and Sen. Gary Siplin of Orlando, chairman of the legislative black caucus.

Ellen Friedin, chairwoman of Fair Districts, called Haridopolos' allegations misleading and "amazingly disrespectful to minority voters."

"Whereas the Fair Districts amendments have very specific and strongly worded protections for minority voters, all the legislative amendment says is that minority voting rights have to be considered," she said. "There's no mandate in their amendment, other than what exists today in federal law."

Rep. Joe Gibbons, D-Hallandale Beach, was one of several minority lawmakers who blasted the Legislature's amendment last month. "No one can honestly read (the Legislature's amendment) and tell me that it strengthens protections relating to minority representation," said Gibbons, who is black.

But some political scientists agree that complying with the Fair Districts proposals could be difficult without impinging on political representation that minorities have now.

Under the Federal Voting Rights Act, "you have to make sure minorities have an opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice," said Susan MacManus, political scientist at the University of South Florida. "But Florida's racial and ethnic diversity makes it very difficult to draw districts, because of the residential concentration of some minority groups."

Some of Florida's strangest looking districts are so shaped to protect the representation of such groups, she said, noting the example of one Congressional district that expands and contracts along a tortured path from Jacksonville to Orlando.

Democrat Corrine Brown, who is black, has represented the district since 1992.

Friedin said the Fair Districts amendments prioritize minority representation, expressly forbidding lawmakers from drawing districts "with the intent or result of denying or abridging the equal opportunity of racial or language minorities to participate in the political process or to diminish their ability to elect representatives of their choice."

Haridopolos faulted the group for failing to show how their plan would work. If voters adopt Amendments 5 and 6 in November, the incoming Senate president has said repeatedly this year, "It's going to be lawsuit city."

But "lawsuit city" is already booming.

On May 24, Brown and U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Miami filed a lawsuit to throw out the Fair Districts ballot question addressing Congressional districts. Their challenge stems partly from a 2009 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the Voting Rights Act protects majority-minority districts but not "minority access" districts such as Brown's, drawn to concentrate large numbers of minority voters but without making them a majority.

"This so-called fair amendment would, in essence, have the effect of disallowing the creation of those seats," said Diaz-Balart, a Republican who represents a protected majority-minority district.

State Sen. Charlie Justice, D-St. Petersburg, condemned the lawsuit, calling it "one more attempt by those in power to continue to hold on to that power."

However heated the debate between the two sides, voters may nevertheless find that all three amendments appear to place similar limits on the redistricting process.

"If the (public's) anger at government is as intense in November as it is now, chances are that any amendments promising to limit government will pass," MacManus said.