Update: Many thanks to driftglass for including this article in Crooks&Liars Mike's Blog Round-up!
If there's a "Things I Despise" list, somewhere in the Top Five is a seething disgust for my state's pandering demonizing governor Ron DeSantis, he of the Culture Wars obsessions in a desperate attempt to outmaneuver the likes of trump himself for the 2024 Presidential primaries.
Somewhere just slightly above him is a raging disgust for the constant corruption of state-level gerrymandering, where every ten years the Far Right Conservatives running Florida and half the other states intentionally skew the population numbers to carve out party-friendly districts to where Republicans will have enough "safe" seats to hold onto political power even when statistically speaking their numbers put them in the minority.
(And yes, I hate the hypocrisy of Democrats configuring their own gerrymandering in response. It's a downward spiral where only partisans survive while moderates who can't campaign in any districts get kicked to the curb)
I had been hoping across the years of blogging at this place that eventually the gerrymander would face enough legal scrutiny in the courts that the damn thing would expire, but alas in 2019 the conservative-bent Supreme Court decided to not only spare the gerrymander but gave it a nice home and a full pension.
From there, it was only a matter of time - the 2022 Midterms which OH FCKING GOD IS THIS YEAR - that the gerrymander would come back to mock my pragmatic sense of electoral fairness.
So of course I was dreading how the Florida Legislature - dominated by Republicans since the 1990s and looking to enforce that dominance for another ten years - would carve out new state-level and federal Congressional districts even with the constitutionally-mandated Fair Districts amendments limiting how they could twist population zones into five Republican districts for every one Democratic even though the party split statewide is close to 45-45 with 10 percent third-party/no-party registered.
(If the redistricting process was truly fair, you'd think at least ONE No-Party-Affiliated district would pop up at the state level out of 120 Representative districts, but nooooooo.)
Apparently, for the state districts - House and Senate - the voting was done along party lines and the Florida Democratic members questioning the lack of transparency although it doesn't seem like there's much room to challenge the final maps. The state maps were sent to the State Supreme Court for final review and apparently that Court - as Republican-leaning as they are after 20 years of one-party rule in Florida - were cleared this March.
What happened to dial up the redistricting drama this cycle was an unusual veto of the Congressional maps, something that DeSantis could interfere with and did so. Previous governors never insisted on drawing up their own redistricting maps, but DeSantis did that this time and with a map a little more partisan than even the legislative Republicans were comfortable with.
At first it seemed like the Lege were going to put up a ruckus when DeSantis called for a special session - which costs extra to the taxpayers, by the way - to get them vote his way... and then this week the GOP legislators pretty much rolled over and agreed to support DeSantis' map. To Joe Hernandez at NPR for more:
Republican legislative leaders in Florida say they're going to give up trying to redraw the state's new map of congressional districts and instead consider one offered by Gov. Ron DeSantis during a special session next week.
DeSantis, a potential Republican presidential aspirant, has been pushing a map that's considered more advantageous to his party.
The announcement on Monday by state Senate President Wilton Simpson and House Speaker Chris Sprowls came two weeks after DeSantis vetoed a map that had been approved by the legislature.
"At this time, Legislative reapportionment staff is not drafting or producing a map for introduction during the special session," the lawmakers said in a letter. "We are awaiting a communication from the Governor's Office with a map that he will support."
The ACLU of Florida condemned the legislature's decision to punt the responsibilities of redistricting to DeSantis, calling it an "unprecedented" and "undemocratic" move.
"People should pick their politicians, not the other way around," the group said in a statement...
DeSantis is arguing that the Lege's map carved out two Black-majority districts in North Florida that he feels should be more "race-neutral," but in the process he's looking to redraw everything else around that to skew the results more in favor to Republicans. To refer to Jane C. Timm and Marc Caputo over at NBC News:
The map — which would carve up a Black-held district — was released Wednesday afternoon, just days after state legislators said they would defer to DeSantis, a Republican, on the new congressional boundaries. The Republican-controlled Legislature drew maps that would have created less of a GOP advantage, but DeSantis vetoed them last month.
DeSantis' map would create 20 Republican seats and eight Democratic ones based on 2020 electoral data, according to Matthew Isbell, a leading Florida-based Democratic data consultant who analyzed the maps Wednesday evening. Florida’s congressional delegation consists of 16 Republicans and 11 Democrats in the House. The state was apportioned an additional House seat after the 2020 census.
“It’s so blatantly partisan,” Isbell said. “The only way you can create a 20-and-8 map... was to basically say, ‘Screw Black representation.’”
As I've mentioned earlier, in terms of voter numbers there's a near-even balance between registered Republicans (5.14 million) and registered Democrats (5.03 million) so in a 28-seat situation it ought to be 15R - 13D (if you calculate the No-Party count of 3.8 million, it ought to be 11 Republican, 10 Democrat, and 7 NPA).
Yet this gerrymandering by DeSantis would give Republicans a 20-to-8 advantage in Congressional seats. It's insanely wrong, and gives too much power to Republicans when it shouldn't.
And it's unconstitutional as hell. Those Fair District Amendments I'd mentioned earlier require that the redrawn districts do not conflict with minority (read: Black and Latino) rights, and those districts cannot be drawn in such a way as to "favor or disfavor a political party or incumbent." The map that DeSantis wants clearly over-represents Republicans, and by breaking up two districts that were designed to protect minority representation he's violating that rule as well.
It's clear that this is a matter heading to the courts, but it's also under a deadline because these midterms require the electoral maps be in place for the Congressional primaries by September (meaning August at the very latest). Even if this matter gets sped through the appeals process, there is a very dark possibility that at least for 2022 DeSantis' map will be the one used for the national election cycle this November.
And that could seriously impact on which party controls the U.S. House heading into 2023. If the Republicans regain control of the House even by one seat due to DeSantis' manipulations, we are likely going to see the swift retuning of Congressional investigations into baseless allegations of unproven voter fraud and meaningless impeachment inquiries against President Biden out of sheer spite for what legitimately happened to donald trump (twice).
This is why I hate gerrymanders. Instead of voting for actual representation on issues that matter to constituents it's all been turned into an exercise of map-making to let partisan hacks seize control, and wield power for their own selfish needs and NOT for the people living back home.
I hope to God DeSantis' map fails and that sanity - even if it means a 17-11 Republican "majority" that still doesn't represent us - prevails.
In the meantime, the only remaining way to defeat a gerrymander is to GET THE VOTE OUT and override the statistical disadvantages that the Republicans try to force on Democratic voters. Rise up, Democrats, turnout still means everything...
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