Fair Districts? Maybe ... by gimleteye

"You think all votes are equal? Then how do you explain the fact that in this state there were, last time I looked up the figures, 4,722,076 registered Democrats and 4,064,301 Republicans -- 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 state Legislature, in the House of Representatives there are 77 Republicans and 43 Democrats, while in the Senate there are 26 Republicans and 14 Democrats." Read this editorial published in the Tampa Bay Tribune about the effort to bring Fair Districts to Florida through a petition drive to change the Florida Constitution: yes, another measure to protect democracy that the Republican lead Florida legislature won't do on its own. (click, read more) And sign the petition to qualify Fair Districts Florida for the 2010 election.

STATE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT
How to end gerrymandering

Published: Saturday, February 14, 2009 at 1:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, February 13, 2009 at 3:40 p.m.
I hope you will not think ill of me if I tell you that I do not know how to fix the financial mess through which we are living. I leave that subject to experts, and when I find one who has the answers, I will immediately spread the word.
Meanwhile let me make good use of this space by telling you how we can achieve another very important goal -- making all votes equal in this country -- or at least in Florida.
You think all votes are equal? Then how do you explain the fact that in this state there were, last time I looked up the figures, 4,722,076 registered Democrats and 4,064,301 Republicans -- 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 state Legislature, in the House of Representatives there are 77 Republicans and 43 Democrats, while in the Senate there are 26 Republicans and 14 Democrats.
Obviously a Republican has more voting power than a Democrat. How come? Gerrymandering.
Congressional districts and state House and Senate districts are redrawn after the every- 10- year census. The drawing is done by the Legislature or by someone designated by the Legislature.
Gerrymandering is the art of drawing legislative districts in a way that favors the party doing the drawing. In Florida, the process consists of stuffing as many Democrats as possible into one district, giving them a substantial majority, while leaving a smaller but still controlling majority of Republicans in other districts. Computers have made this ridiculously easy to do.
Until the 1960s, many states did not bother to change their legislative districts. They just kept the boundaries where they had been perhaps for a century, with the result that population shifts left some districts with many more voters than other districts.
This created situations within a state where you could have a district with, say, 100,000 voters and another with 300,000. Yet each elected one representative, so that a voter in the smaller district had three times as much clout as a voter in the larger district. This led, in Florida, to cases in which voters in sparsely populated areas of north Florida had much more voting power than voters in Miami or Tampa. Or Sarasota.
In a series of decisions in the 1960s the U.S. Supreme Court upset this arrangement by ruling that all legislative districts within a state must have roughly the same population. As they said then, one man, one vote.
The result has been that states have had to review and often change districts every 10 years. But, they do not have to draw the lines at random or in a logical fashion which creates mostly compact districts. They can draw them in any shape.
Gov. Gerry of Massachusetts in the early 1800s drew one that looked like a lizard -- hence the word gerrymander. In 2001 the Florida Legislature drew one that stretched from the Atlantic to the Gulf -- only the most egregious of several districts with strange shapes intended to put more Republicans in Congress.
The Supreme Court in 2006 upheld the constitutionality of a 2003 Texas gerrymander, masterminded by the infamous Tom DeLay, that switched the Texas delegation from 17-15 Democratic to 21-11 Republican.
In light of that decision, what hope is there for eliminating gerrymandering in Florida?
One possibility would be to keep a Democrat in the White House long enough to make several Supreme Court appointments. One would be for Democrats against long odds to win control of of the state Legislature. But the best hope -- and it's a long shot -- is to amend the state constitution.
And, as it happens, two petitions are now being circulated to do just that. One would end gerrymandering of election districts for the state Legislature and the other would end gerrymandering of congressional districts. Both are being sponsored by a group called Fair Districts Florida.
The amendments cleared a major hurdle a few days ago when the Florida Supreme Court approved the ballot language.
A much higher hurdle is to get 676,811 signatures of Florida citizens for each petition. That's definitely a number possible to reach.
But, a much, much higher hurdle is that to amend the state constitution you have to get a 60 percent affirmative vote. Until recently, amending the constitution required only majority approval. But, the Florida Legislature, knowing gerrymandering would be a target for amendment, prepared its own amendment raising the margin to 60 percent, and Florida voters, in one of the greatest examples in human history of shooting yourself in the foot, approved this gross theft of their freedom.
Now, it is certainly true that for many years Democrats gerrymandered the state to their advantage. And, some day when they get control of the Legislature will do so again.
But, the simple and overriding truth is that gerrymandering by either party is an affront to democracy and to the expectation that all men and women are equal under the law.
If you agree with that assessment, and would like to do something to help make all votes and all voters equal, you should contact Fair Districts Florida at P.O. Box 350188, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33335.
Or on the Web at: FairDistrictsFlorida.org.
They will tell you how and where to get petitions and how and where to mail them and how to get your friends to do likewise.
I can think of few better ways to spend your time while waiting for the recovery of the economy.
Waldo Proffitt is the former editor of the Herald-Tribune. E-mail: wproffitt@comcast.net