Florida redistricting lawsuit

[BrainGlutton]

@Terr

So let’s say there is proportional voting for your state’s delegation. Let’s say there are five loosely defined geographic areas - A through E. You’re from area E. Through proportional representation, none of the people elected into your state’s delegation are from area E. In fact, they are mostly from area A, on the other end of the state. Do you really think that the candidates that were elected who come from the other areas will keep your area’s interests close to heart while representing your state? Better than the candidates from E would have?

We all have other, and often more important, political interests than our geographic-community interests.

“Surely where a man lives is the least important thing about him.”

– The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Terr

So let’s say there is proportional voting for your state’s delegation. Let’s say there are five loosely defined geographic areas - A through E. You’re from area E. Through proportional representation, none of the people elected into your state’s delegation are from area E. In fact, they are mostly from area A, on the other end of the state. Do you really think that the candidates that were elected who come from the other areas will keep your area’s interests close to heart while representing your state? Better than the candidates from E would have?

What interests might my area have that require defending in Congress and are distinct from those of people in area A?

[Terr]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

What interests might my area have that require defending in Congress and are distinct from those of people in area A?

A may be urban. Yours may be farmland. Very different interests. Just an example.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

Okay - but what makes you think the people of E cannot adequately represent farmers? I assume you’re not proposing we get rid of the senate, which comes with the same problems built in?

[Terr]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

Okay - but what makes you think the people of E cannot adequately represent farmers? I assume you’re not proposing we get rid of the senate, which comes with the same problems built in?

You mean people of A cannot. Why would they? They are from area A, they know area A, area A is completely urban, not one field or cow there, a rep that comes from A doesn’t know his combine from his compost, the closest he ever got to a cow is when eating a hamburger. Senate is “big picture”. House is supposed to look at local problems. You do proportional representation, and local stuff will fall through the cracks completely.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

You can’t have it both ways. As you keep saying, “all politics is local”. What is the point of the Senate if its members have no local connection? Beyond that, what are these local cow problems that require intervention at the highest level of our government?

[Terr]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

You can’t have it both ways. As you keep saying, “all politics is local”. What is the point of the Senate if its members have no local connection? Beyond that, what are these local cow problems that require intervention at the highest level of our government?

If our federal government was as limited as it is supposed to be, Constitutionally, there would be no problem. But since the federal government now is sticking its nose into everything, yes, local cow problems require representation at the federal government level, to defend, protect and support local interests.

[Chronos]

Under a proportional representation system, candidates would be free to pursue whatever constituencies they wanted. If a politician from region E wanted to run on a platform of “I’ll stand up for the interests of farmers”, then he could. If there are enough farmers who think that’s worthwhile, then he’ll win a seat. If there aren’t enough farmers who think that’s worthwhile, then he won’t.

Now, you may think that’s a problem, but the alternative is even worse. You could argue that, despite being a minority, farmers are important enough that they should have their own representation. But the same can be said of many other minorities. What if, for instance, teachers decide we should get our own representative? What’s the congressional district that encompasses us?

[voltaire]

I see the thread is getting pretty far afield, but I’m surprised nobody has mentioned the recent juicy bit, most succinctly summarized here:

Back in 2012, the legislators had requested input from the public on the redistricting process — private citizens could submit their own ideas for maps. So on November 1, one complete map was submitted under the name of Alex Posada, who had recently been a student at Florida State University. Parts of that map were used in the legislature’s final map, and legislators praised Posada’s contribution as an example of citizen participation.

But in a surprising twist yesterday, Posada came forward and said he had nothing to do with the map submitted under his name. “Posada testified he never drew the map, never submitted it, and the Gmail account in his name that was used to submit the maps was not his,” reports Mary Ellen Klas of the Miami Herald.

Where, then, did this map that the state GOP so loved come from? Well, Florida GOP official Frank Terraferma testified that parts of Posada’s map were “identical” to a map he had previously drawn, Klas writes. But he’s also said he has no idea how such a similar map ended up submitted to the legislature under someone else’s name.

Oh there’s a new law against blatantly partisan gerrymandering? Nothing a little creative astro-turf approach can’t fix! We’ll just use maps drawn by “private citizens.” Any resemblance to maps blatantly gerrymandered by party operatives is purely coincidental!

[BrainGlutton]

@voltaire

I see the thread is getting pretty far afield, but I’m surprised nobody has mentioned the recent juicy bit, most succinctly summarized here:

Oh there’s a new law against blatantly partisan gerrymandering? Nothing a little creative astro-turf approach can’t fix! We’ll just use maps drawn by “private citizens.” Any resemblance to maps blatantly gerrymandered by party operatives is purely coincidental!

In the past Dems and Pubs have been more or less equally guilty of gerrymandering when they could, and, therefore, probably more or less equally guilty of dishonest tactics to that end. But, in the past decade or so, for some reason it appears the Dems have grown to be far more sinned against than sinning in those regards.

[BrainGlutton]

@BrainGlutton

That is actually the form of PR Michael Lind proposed (and argued it can be done without constitutional amendment) in this 1992 article.

BTW, in the same article Lind predicts what form a multiparty system might take:

It is anyone’s guess what the parties in a House elected by PR would be. (The Senate would continue to be elected the way it is now, and such effect as there would be on it would be indirect.) Although voters might continue to identify with the two major parties for a time, dissidents would soon learn that third-party votes were not wasted.

The largest party in the House might well be the Republicans. As it is, their party, with its homogeneous and stable group of core voters and centralized, disciplined organization, is far more like a European party than the Democratic Party is. If PR were adopted, the Republicans might lose their right wing to a new conservative party or parties, but the number of right-wing Republican voters is fairly small (as the Patrick Buchanan campaign unintentionally demonstrated, by adding only single-digit figures to large protest votes). The Republicans might compensate for their loss by becoming a more consistently classical-liberal party–pro-business, pro-choice–and attracting fiscally conservative social liberals who now identify with a Democrat like Paul Tsongas. Such a neoliberal Republican Party might hold steady at 35 to 40 percent of the House.

The Democratic Party, an incoherent coalition of smaller proto-parties, lobbies, interest groups, and machines, which are brought together only by the winner-take-all logic of our electoral system, would, however, probably disintegrate. The breakup of the Democratic Party as the result of PR would not mean that the power of today’s Democratic voters would decline. On the contrary, the kind of moderate Democrats represented by the Democratic Leadership Council, freed from the electoral necessity of appeasing ethnic and liberal lobbies, might well prosper. Together with “Reagan Democrats” wooed back from the Republican presidential coalition, moderate Democrats in Congress might form a Populist Party equivalent to Christian Democratic parties in Europe. Slightly right of center on social issues and foreign policy, slightly left of center on middle-class benefits, such a party could be expected to draw substantial support from Northeastern ethnics, middle-and lower-middle-class whites and Hispanics in the South and West, and perhaps socially conservative blacks. It would be heavily Catholic. A Populist Party might be the nearest rival to the Republicans for the status of largest party in the House.

The United States, unlike Europe, probably would not have a strong Social Democratic Party, given the low level of unionization and the lack of a mainstream socialist intellectual tradition here. There might nevertheless be something that called itself the Social Democratic Party, representing unions, farmers, public-sector employees. Heavily black and Hispanic, such a party would favor protectionism and government subsidies to industry.

A small American Green Party would almost certainly arise from the decomposition of the Democrats. Appealing to New Age environmentalists, pacifists, feminists, and gay-rights activists, such a party might have trouble winning five percent of the vote in successive elections. So might other fringe parties that are easy to imagine: the Conservatives, a far right-fundamentalist alliance; the Multicultural Coalition, a coalition of ethnic-separatist parties; and anti-tax Libertarians.

Carrying this speculative exercise one step further, we might assign percentages of House membership to these hypothetical parties. Based on European experience and American political subcultures, the pattern might be as follows: Republicans (40 percent), Populists (30 percent), Social Democrats (15 percent), Greens (5 percent), Conservatives (5 percent), Multiculturalists and Libertarians (5 percent between them).

I could live with that lineup – is there anyone here who couldn’t?

[YogSothoth]

Not me. I don’t want the Republicans to have any power at all. They’ve shown that they cannot be trusted with it

[BrainGlutton]

@YogSosoth

Not me. I don’t want the Republicans to have any power at all. They’ve shown that they cannot be trusted with it

But they will always have some so long as they have voters. At least this system would give them only the power of a plurality-party.

[BrainGlutton]

@BrainGlutton

Is anything like this happening in other states?

Apparently.

The Supreme Court said Monday it will consider a challenge from Alabama Democrats who say a Republican-drawn legislative map intentionally packs black Democrats into a few voting districts, giving them too little influence in the Legislature and shutting out white Democrats in the process.

The justices agreed to hear a pair of appeals from the Alabama Legislative Black Caucus and other Democratic lawmakers who contend the new map created in 2012 illegally limits black voting strength and makes it harder to elect white Democrats outside the majority-black districts.

A panel of three federal judges had ruled 2-1 last year that the new districts were not discriminatory and did not violate the Voting Rights Act or the Constitution.

Joe Reed, chairman of the Alabama Democratic Conference, said the Republican-designed districts were contrived to reduce the number of black voters in majority white districts.

“They were doing their level best to wipe out white Democrats,” he said. “They were trying their best to have a Legislature of white Republicans and black Democrats, and then they could ignore the black Democrats.”

[BrainGlutton]

Tampa Bay Times columnist John Romano writes:

They want you to believe in coincidences. They want you to accept a few minor indiscretions. Mostly, they want you to trust them and ignore the pile of evidence.

To do that, you would have to accept:

1. That no one knows how pertinent emails were deleted.

2. That the collective amnesia claimed by witness after witness was believable.

3. That legislative assistants had no ulterior motives when swapping maps with Republican Party consultants weeks before they were released.

4. That it was entirely coincidental that a map supposedly submitted by a student at Florida State University was practically identical to a map drawn by a party consultant.

5. That nothing shady was going on even though the FSU student admitted he never actually drew a map and didn’t know how his name ended up on it.

6. That it was a case of serendipity when the student ended up working for a company run by the House speaker’s brother.

[Lok]

@Skammer

I don’t care for the idea of eliminating state allegiances from the House of Representatives, but I would like to see proportional voting determine the makeup of each state’s delegation. For example, living in suburban Tennessee I have absolutely no chance of being represented by a Democrat in congress - there are only 2 Democratic house members from the whole state (with districts in Nashville and Memphis). If we got rid of congressional districts, the ratio might not change that much but at least I would feel like my vote counted.

Or Ohio might end up with 8 Dems and 8 Repubs in the House, rather than 4 Dems and 12 Repubs. Amazing how a state that is split almost exactly 50/50 elects such a large majority of Republicans to the House. Can’t be because of any gerrymandering though. The Republicans in the Ohio legislature couldn’t possibly do anything like that. :dubious:

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

In a development that clears up nothing, the First District Court of Appeal has now kicked the issue back up to the Florida Supreme Court to decide whether it was correct to allow the documents in.

[BrainGlutton]

Well, here’s a victory – though apparently in a different case (different appellate district) than the one referenced in the OP.

TAMPA, Fla. — In a sharply worded decision, a Florida judge ruled late Thursday that Republicans illegally redrew the state’s congressional districts, saying they “made a mockery” of an amendment meant to inject fairness into a process that has long been politically tainted.

Judge Terry P. Lewis of Florida’s Second Judicial Circuit ordered that two districts be redrawn — one, the 10th District, now held by Representative Daniel Webster, a Republican, and the other, the Fifth District, held by Representative Corrine Brown, a Democrat. In redrawing them, neighboring districts are also likely to be affected.

<snip>

Judge Lewis delivered a blistering, 41-page attack on Florida’s redistricting process, reserving his most scathing criticism for the Republican establishment, including political operatives. He said it was clear that Republican operatives had managed to “infiltrate and influence” the Florida Legislature.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

I was kind of okay with Webster’s district being gerrymandered because it meant my house was no longer in it (it used to cover eastern Orange and south Seminole counties). Now I’ve got John Mica instead, who is just as conservative but knows how to keep his stupid mouth shut.

[voltaire]

Congrats and thanks to the League of Women Voters, et al. for all the good work while most of Florida couldn’t be arsed to care about the hijacking of their government.