Talk Elections

Now that we know it has two new seats (ugh, I was soooooooooooooooo hoping it'd be denied the second due to its current decline, maybe it'll lose a seat in 2020 :) ), so I drew this new non-partisan map:

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District analysis coming up...

FL-01 (blue): Not much different from the current one. Very safe R seat.
FL-02 (green): Also not much different. This district isn't as conservative as the other ones Blue Dogs were bounced from, and it still has some white liberals, so it might flip back in a good year.
FL-03 (purple): Quite a safe R seat. It has Gainesville but I doubt that's enough.
FL-04 (red): South bit of Jacksonville plus some very Republican counties. Safe R.
FL-05 (yellow): Practically a pure toss-up.
FL-06 (teal): Very interesting seat. Very Republican Nassau county plus most of Jacksonville, including the black parts. About 35% black. Probably voted for Obama narrowly, but only due to a surge in black turnout. This one could flip all over the place depending on turnout models, kind of like OH-01. Of course the Democrats need to nominate someone other than Corrine Brown.
FL-07 (gray): Very safe R seat.
FL-08 (light purple): Very safe D seat now that the gerrymandering in this area has been eliminated. Capable of returning the glorious ALAN GRAYSON to office! YES YES YES YES YES YES!
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FL-09 (teal): A bunch of boring suburbs and some Democratic areas. Call it an R-leaning swing seat.
FL-10 (pink): This is the seat that douchebag Webster who will be taking Alan Grayson's seat but isn't fit to shine Grayson's shoes will probably take. Pretty safe R.
FL-11 (olive): Coastal seat but pretty Republican. Only Democratic area is St. Lucie.
FL-12 (light blue): Interesting seat, the two counties were only about 51% McCain. But that's still R+6 or so, and this isn't an area where there's lots of swing voters on either side. Any non-horrendous Republican could probably hold it, but it would never be truly "safe".
FL-13 (pink): Once the now misnamed Young retires, this will flip. And he almost certainly will in the next 10 years.
FL-14 (brown): Tough to tell how this one voted with no partisan data, but must be pretty Republican.
FL-15 (orange): Not like the old gerrymandered monstrosity. A bit less safe, but any competent Democrat should easily hold it. Kathy Castor should have no problems.
FL-16 (light green): Pretty safe Republican seat.
FL-17 (dark purple): Same. That election-stealing douche Buchanan should hold easily.
FL-18 (yellow): Decently Republican, but flippable in a good year.
FL-19 (that weird greenish color): Very safe Republican seat. Hellhole.
FL-20 (pink): Majority black, Alcee Hastings' new seat.
FL-21 (maroon): Also majority black, Frederica Wilson will hold.
FL-22 (brown): The old gerrymandered monstrosity that black Republican nutjob will hold is gone. This one will flip Dem.
FL-23 (tealish): I don't know if Deutch or Wasserman-Schultz is more likely to run here, but either one will win.
FL-24 (purple): Same, the other one of the Jewish Democrats will win here.
FL-25 (dark pink): Cuban majority, that new nutjob or Diaz-Balart will hold it.
FL-26 (gray): Same, probably will be the seat for Diaz-Balart.
FL-27 (light green): Cuban majority, the weakest Cuban seat but a gay-friendly moderate like Ros-Lehtinen shouldn't have much problems.

Did you use the new population estimates or the old ones? I did a map this morning and some of the county proportions look a lot different from yours.

I tried to minimize county splits, but sometimes it's unavoidable. Open the images in a new window to see them more clearly.

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Starting at the panhandle...

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FL-01 (blue, Jeff Miller - R) - Not much changed here (the district shrunk toward the west), extremely safe R district.
FL-02 (green, Steve Southerland - R) - Shifts a little to the west accordingly, but still will be a safe Republican district.
FL-03 (purple, Corrine Brown - D) - The current monstrosity gets eliminated, and instead we have a greater Jacksonville area district. Would probably lean to the Dems, but Brown would have no chance of holding this seat.
FL-04 ( red, Ander Crenshaw - R) - Contracts to become all of the area surrounding Jacksonville. Safe R.
FL-06 (dark teal, Cliff Stearns - R) - Gainesville is balanced out by some heavily-Republican counties. Should probably still lean R, though elections might actually be interesting in this district for once.
FL-07 (grey, John Mica - R) - The problem is Mica lives outside this district (he's in Winter Park in Orange County, the same place Daniel Webster lives). He'd have to move, but this district would be safe for him, assuming he'd win a primary here (it's mostly new territory to him).
FL-27 (light mint green, new district) - Open seat consisting of Volusia, Flagler, Putnam, and part of St. Johns. Swing district.

Central Florida:

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FL-05 (yellow, Rich Nugent - R) - Fairly Republican district. Shouldn't be too tough to hold.
FL-08 (purple, Daniel Webster - R) - Mostly Orlando and western Orange County. This one would probably be fairly Democratic, especially since it's 48% white, 26% black, and 19% Hispanic.
FL-09 (light teal, Gus Bilirakis - R) - Mostly unchanged, the borders are a bit different. Should lean R.
FL-10 (magenta, Bill Young - R) - Basically the entire peninsula of Pinellas County. I'm guessing the bits that are chopped out currently are Democratic, so it probably moves a few points to the Dems.
FL-11 (light green, Kathy Castor - D) - Tampa and the surrounding area, safe Dem.
FL-12 (light purple, Dennis Ross - R) - All of Polk and part of Osceola. Should have a decent Republican lean.
FL-15 (orange, Bill Posey - R) - Brevard, Indian River, and a little bit of Volusia. Definitely a Republican district.
FL-24 (dark purple, Sandy Adams - R) - I have no idea where Sandy Adams lives, but this is the other half of Orange County, and parts of Osceola and Seminole. I'm guessing this one would either be a swing district or lean Dem? It's 53% white, 33% Hispanic.

South Florida:

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FL-13 (pink, Vern Buchanan - R) - Buchanan lives in Sarasota, which is in the southern end of the district. Mostly Manatee and parts of eastern Hillsborough. Should have a slight Republican lean.
FL-14 (brown, Connie Mack - R) - Hard to see, but this one's part of Lee, and almost all of Hendry and Collier. Safe R.
FL-16 (light green, Tom Rooney - R) - Rooney is in the tiny slice of northern Palm Beach County. The district stretches across the state from St. Lucie and Indian River to DeSoto and Hardee. Should have a decent Republican lean.
FL-26 (grey, new district) - Charlotte and parts of Sarasota and Lee. Definitely leans Republican.

Miami area:

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FL-17 (purple, Frederica Wilson - D) - Pretty much unchanged; 54% black.
FL-18 (yellow, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen - R) - Also pretty much the same, although it picks up the mainland part of Monroe to keep the county within one district. 61% Hispanic.
FL-21 (dark red, Mario Diaz-Balart - R) - V-shaped to take in all the non-black northern parts of Miami. 76% Hispanic.
FL-25 (pink, David Rivera - R) - Pretty much the same as before. 73% Hispanic.

Palm Beach and Broward Counties:

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FL-19 (brownish yellow, Ted Deutch - D) - Most of the white parts of Palm Beach County; safe Dem. I didn't even bother trying to figure out where the Reps in the southeastern part of the state live, given how much of a mess the current map is.
FL-20 (pink, Allen West - R) - Picks up quite a bit of territory from FL-22, which should push the district to the Dems.
FL-22 (brownish red, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz - D) - Southern Palm Beach and northern Broward; I'm assuming it's still a Dem district, although probably not as packed-in. It picks up some parts of FL-19.
FL-23 (light green, Alcee Hastings - D) - The black parts of Palm Beach and Broward Counties connected by a big tract of vacant land. 52% black.

I assume that if Republicans choose to ignore the fair redistricting amendment and lawsuits ensue then Florida could have a court-drawn map.

Shouldn't there be a new Hispanic majority district in South Florida?

I used the new population estimates. Just confirmed it.

Problem is there's nowhere for one to go. There have to be two black-majority seats and three Hispanic seats. Also, dilute the Cubans too much and you get Democratic seats. A 55% Hispanic seat in South Florida would probably elect a white Democrat before any Hispanic of either party as whites would control the Democratic primary and Cubans would be outvoted by the combined voting strength of whites and Puerto Ricans/other Hispanics.

Also, one of the two new districts added in 2002 was a Hispanic district in South Florida (the other being a district near Orlando), so it wouldn't make sense to add a new district in the same place this time.

I thought someone had posted a previous map which had 4 Hispanic seats in South Florida but perhaps I was mistaken.  I'll have to play around with it myself again.

Is it technically possible to draw a Non-Cuban Hispanic Opportunity district? Not that Republicans will want to, or can legally be compelled to even if possible, of course; though it would make a lot of sense.

I think Orlando is the only place outside of Miami with a big enough Hispanic population for that. You can draw about a 41% Hispanic district across Orange and Osceola Counties. That's assuming that the Hispanics who live there aren't Cuban, about which I have no idea.

Dade has lots of non-Cuban Hispanics... lots of South Americans especially... and is where I meant. (And yeah, the Hispanics at Orlando are mostly Portorican IIRC. Lots of Mexicans too.)

The main problem you might run into is differentials in citizenship rates between Cuban-Americans and others, followed by whether non-Cubans live in distinct neighborhoods from Cubans or not. Right now all of Miami-Dade not in Meek's old district is represented by Cuban-American reps so you'd have to dislodge one of them with redistricting existing seats, which may not work, given how easily the one Diaz-Balart shifted from one district to another. Interestingly, the Census indicates there are about 400,000 Hispanics in Broward County who aren't included in any of JohnnyLongtorso's Miami-Dade districts. I remember hearing that Weston was nicknamed "Westonzuela," and also that Pembroke Pines has a large Latino population, but none of that necessarily excludes Cubans.

It looks like the Hispanics in Broward are too spread out to make a Hispanic-opportunity district. I just messed around with it, and to get about to 35% Hispanic, it has to stretch the entire length of the county.

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Maps of South Florida I made using the the "new estimates" button in the app.  There are two black majority districts and 4 Hispanic majority districts.  Here's the racial breakdown of all 9 that I drew.

FL-17 dark purple (54% Black, 25% Hispanic, 17% White)
FL-18 yellow (58% Hispanic, 34% White, 5% Black)
FL-19  pea green (65% White, 20% Hispanic, 12% Black)
FL-20 light pink (71% White, 19% Hispanic, 6% Black)
FL-21 dark red (57% Hispanic, 32% White, 8% Black)
FL-22 brown (73% White, 14% Hispanic, 10% Black)
FL-23 light blue (53% Black, 27% White, 16% Hispanic)
FL-25 dark pink (61% Hispanic, 29% White, 7% Black)
FL-27 bright green (68% Hispanic, 20% White, 10% Black)

If this map can be made with Dave's app then I'm sure a much more sophisticated map could be made that balances out the Hispanics enough to get four districts that are at least 60% Hispanic assuming the app's population estimates aren't too far removed from the current racial distribution.

That's a really interesting map, I didn't think it was possible but you've proven it is. However, I would say that the yellow district puts Ros-Lehtinen at risk of losing to a Democrat.

Why wouldn't the Republicans run the 3rd from Jacksonville to Tallahassee (obviously noncompact) sucking up all the black areas?

The amendment that was passed allows for exceptions based on federal law. Justify it by saying you're avoiding retrogression.

Also, draw a new compact district in Orlando. Alan Grayson makes his comeback here. Once you put into place the 3rd and the new 26th, the rest of Northern Florida is pretty Republican.

The only rep that seems absolutely dead is Allen West, there's no way to get a clean Republican district in Broward/Palm Beach.

Coalition districts (it's 49% black) don't get protected the way majority-black (or majority-Hispanic) districts do. This is why Corinne Brown is trying to challenge the fair districts law rather than waiting for the map to try and challenge it on VRA grounds.

Not a single gratuitious county split and no attention whatsoever to the VRA or to racial composition of anything until I was finished. (So, yeah, fantasy map - though it does not really matter outside South Florida.) No attention to city boundaries, preferring roads, rivers, and edges of densely built territory instead.

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Central Florida enhance:

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No South Florida enhance because it's a fantasy map anyways. Though I preserved the three Cuban seats without actually trying... no Black seats though. Well, one nearly even threeway that Frederica Wilson probably could win.

Sine the western one of the Orlando seats is just 44% White, you could probably claim that it's a successor seat to Corrine Brown's. Though only to a sympathetic DOJ and judge.

I'm very proud of Donut Jacksonville, and of splitting Lee County along the Caloosahatchee.

This is as nonwhite as you'll get a purely Duval district, I think. 52% White. Corrine Brown wouldn't ever be safe, I guess, but she ought to ba able win both a Democratic Primary and a General Election under normal circumstances.

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These are Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach with absolutely no gratuitous county splits ... and two Black-opportunity districts.

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Green (also includes all of Monroe County) 57% Hispanic, 28% Anglo, 12% Black
Purple 70% Hispanic, 23% White, 6% Black
Red a whopping 82% Hispanic, 9% White, 8% Black
Yellow 48% Black, 25% Hispanic, 22% White, and a nice compact district it is
Teal 57% White, 26% Hispanic, 13% Black
Grey 51% White, 22% Hispanic, 22% Black
Monstrous Lavender 39% White, 38% Black, 19% Hispanic
Monstrous Turquoise 75% White, 16% Hispanic, 6% Black

the white bit of Palm Beach County belongs with a district to the north, as above.
You see the issue. There are additional Black areas in Broward County that I can't get to without an additional county split that I am not prepared to do, and there are next to no Blacks left in Palm Beach. Someone with A LOT of patience could perhaps nudge it just over the edge into Black plurality. One might also try to draw a Black district entirely inside Broward County instead.

Your central Florida map is pretty much what I drew. I never considered that one could argue the new seat in the Orlando area is the successor to Corrine Brown's seat, though I don't see that going far with recent court decisions and the fact that it's about even black and Hispanic.

Since south Florida is just one giant mass I don't think not crossing county lines is that big of a deal, and even if honored to preserve Alcee Hastings seat you basically have to connect two completely different areas with a bunch of empty territory which is far more egregious than merely crossing the county to include black neighborhoods that straddle the border. Even the majority black Palm Beach seat there would no doubt violate the "communities of interest" rule but it'll be ignored no doubt, no one really has any reason to challenge it, even the Democrats wouldn't gain anything by dissolving the seat as it's not possible to draw any non-Cuban Republican districts in south Florida without resorting to a now illegal monstrosity to most districts described as gerrymandered monstrosities to shame like the current FL-22.

I found that you could hit majority black for Alcee Hastings just by drawing a really narrow strip that connects Fort Lauterdale to West Palm Beach, or thereabouts. That leavea a second narrow strip between the 1st strip and the Atlantic Ocean.

Rather than have that mass in the Everglades, just connect Delray and Deerfield beaches from the existing map. It's kind of shaped like a french fry.

As long as you don't give Allen West a FL-22 he can win (and I see no way to do that), I doubt anyone complains.

Thing is the mass in the Everglades is also majority black.

Yeah, but aren't there like 10 people living there?

Looks like 15,000 in Belle Glade, mostly agricultural workers.

Only just barely (exactly 50% black), total population 40,000. Drawing a district out there requires going through some heavily white areas. It is much easier to draw a black seat without taking in Belle Glade and environs. Try it.

But its still in the Republican's advantage to draw something like that anyway.  You effectively put all the Democrats in a compact Orlando district and a majority-black Jacksonville to Gainesville to Tallahassee district, and beyond that, all of North Florida is solid Republican across the board.

I have to figure the Democrats will be limited to 1 North Florida seat, 1 Orlando seat, 2 Tampa Bay seats, and the 5 seats in the Miami area. Or at least that will be the goal before the lawsuits start flying in every direction.

Most maps seem to have a new seat in the Dayton Beach area that would basically be a pure tossup. Kosmas actually lives in that area, she could probably make a comeback as the district isn't a gerrymandered monstrosity.

In establishing Congressional district boundaries:

(1) No apportionment plan or individual district shall be drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent; and districts shall not be drawn 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; and districts shall consist of contiguous territory.

(2) Unless compliance with the standards in this subsection conflicts with the standards in subsection (1) or with federal law, districts shall be as nearly equal in population as is practicable; districts shall be compact; and districts shall, where feasible, utilize existing political and geographical boundaries.

(3) The order in which the standards within sub-sections (1) and (2) of this section are set forth shall not be read to establish any priority of one standard over the other within that subsection.

If a partisan gerrymander is subtle, and complies with sub-section (2), it would be hard to prove intent under sub-section (1).

Depends on what the standard of proof is.

I suspect the intent burden is going to have to be set decently high, because at its heart, every district ever drawn is intended to "favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent". 

But then again, with the Florida Supreme Court, the answer will probably not make any sense.

Maybe they'll distinguish between direct and indirect?

The Florida Supremes are really going to enjoy gutting the GOP plan with the language in the statute quoted above. It gives them a total hunting license, and I think the same  four liberal (and partisan) justices  are still on the Court who dealt with Bush v Gore. So how many seats does the GOP lose with a pretty non partisan plan I wonder?  Just the two new seats, or a couple of more?

Well FL-22 is without question gone.

I tend to agree, henceforth the caveat.  You gotta know what you're dealing with.  :)

FL-10, too. No excuse for cutting out the black parts of St. Petersburg. Bill Young might be able to win the resulting D+5 or so seat, but he's old and will likely retire instead.

There will also have to be two Democratic seats drawn in the Orlando-Kissimmee area. One might be considered a replacement for Brown's seat (although there will also be a marginal or possibly lean D seat in Jacksonville), but the other will be totally new.

Those are the pretty much unavoidable losses for the GOP. There might be others.

I don't think the Orlando area will really be a loss, from what I've drawn while it's true that there will be obviously be a Dem district based around that could return ALAN GRAYSON (!!!!!!!!!!!!) it'll also have a new Republican district near it. That fundie woman-hating piece of sh!t Webster will probably stick around in a new seat.

I see easily where 1 district comes in (and the GOP will want to draw that anyway). I don't see where the second fits or why they would draw it.

Orange County alone is about a district and a half. Osceola County is around a third of a district. Both are exploding in population and trending hard towards the Democrats. Better for the GOP to put them together than to put them with one of the relatively marginal surrounding counties and risk the Democrats having four seats in the area instead of just two. (One problem is that the D area of Seminole County is at the northern end, away from Orange County, so it might not be easy to pack the Democrats into two seats in the area while meeting the fairness requirements.)

Remember that you also have Ds in Volusia and Flagler to dilute if you're a Republican drawing the map. It would be very hard to draw a map in central Florida that would pass court muster and also ensure only one D seat.

And the Tea Partiers are the ones being "uncivil".  Mmm-hmm. 

Are you sure?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_Florida

And the Chief Justice is a former Republican Congressman.

Interesting. No, I was clearly behind the curve on that one. Thanks.

My best try at a fair map

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Florida has a 70 and your done rule with a tiny exception for partial terms with less then 1/2 remaining.  There has also been high turnover in the court in the last 10 years in general with many others resigning to "return to private practice", on top of the aged out people. Bottom line, Jeb and Chucky have had plenty of time to remake the court. It won't save FL-22 of course, but it likely means the scenario you laid out is less likely. Still I would advise that Scott and others not go to far. All four of them do have Crist as their appointer and one of them could easily play Anthony Kennedy on them. 

Florida used a publicly accessible tool for mapping 10 years ago, and they will do so again. Last week they updated their website (http://www.floridaredistricting.org/), and provided a link to the mapping tool (http://floridaredistricting.cloudapp.net/MyDistrictBuilder.aspx). The tool only has data from 10 years ago at present, but you can see how it works. Later this year the tool will be the official site for public submission of plans to the legislature.

Does Michigan's law include any such language?

No. 

http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/stateroundup/census-data-informs-florida-redistricting-plans/1158002

http://www.news-press.com/article/20110317/NEWS0107/110317057/Census-2010-District-map-gets-blueprint?odyssey=mod_sectionstories

It's my turn as a former Florida resident.  I try to allow most major counties to have at least 1 district that's totally within them.  If circumstances do not allow this, I will then keep counties whole as much as possible out of my good government instincts.  The only major exceptions is in my FL-3, designed to allow the Dems to keep a foothold in North Florida, and in the areas where my new districts are located (more of that covered under my districts).  Each of the district will also have a deviation from the ideal population per district of 696,341 by less than 1000 people:

Overview- Northern half
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Overview- Southern half
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Panhandle and North Florida
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Jacksonville Area

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FL-1 (Rep. Jeff Miller, R- Chumuckla), Blue

This district now consists all four of the Panhandle's westernmost counties (Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa and Walton), but retreats from most of Washington County and about one-third of Holes County.  Safe Republican.

FL-2 (Rep. Steve Southerland, R-Panama City), Green

Now dips into Holmes and Washington County.  It also takes Levy County from FL-5 and FL-6 and gain most of rural Alachua County from FL-6.  On the other hand, it is largely removed from Gadsden County and the city of Tallahassee.  Likely Republican.
 
FL-3 (Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville), Purple

This is the new North Florida Democratic vote sink, and one of the few really ugly gerrymander here.  It spans from Gadsden County through Tallahassee; with one arm extending to the black areas of Jacksonville and the other extending into the city of Gainesville.  These areas are the only Democratic bastions in otherwise heavily GOP North Florida, and I feel that compact districts containing Gainesville, Tallahassee and black areas of Jacksonville would be fairly to heavily Republican.  On the other hand, this incarnation allows the Democratic votes in the Orlando area to be freed up.  They will be in my FL-27.  Rep. Brown should still be fine in this 43% black district, although she may face primary challenge from Gainesville or Tallahassee candidates like former State Sen. Al Lawson, who had unsuccessfully primaried then-Rep. Allen Boyd last year.  Likely Democratic.

FL-4 (Rep. Ander Crenshaw, R-Jacksonville), Red

This district is now more focused at the Jacksonville area.  It takes most of Duval County that's not in FL-3 (minus a small southern sliver in FL-7), all of Nassau County and Northern half of Baker County.  The rural areas formerly attached to it are divided among FL-2, 3 and 6.  Safe Republican.

FL-6 (Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Ocala), Teal

It unites Marion County (Stearn's political base) with portions from the old FL-8, and also unites the very conservative Jacksonville suburb of Clay County with bits from the old FL-3.  These hubs are connected with a sliver of rural Alachua County.  It then extends South to take all of Sumter County and the Lady Lake (The Villages) portion of Lake County.  The real competition would be between a Clay County and a Marion County/The Villages Republican.  Safe Republican.

FL-7 (Rep. John Mica, R-Winter Park), Apple Green

While Rep. Mica's home of Winter Park is drawn out of this district, it retains significant portions of his current constituency at St. Johns and Flagler counties.  It now includes all of Putnam and most of Lake (minus the Lady Lake area) counties, with small slivers in Duval, Volusia and Seminole counties (with no significant population centers in the latter two) just for population purposes.  Should be fine for Mica as long as he is willing to move.  In an open-seat scenario, expect a vigorous GOP primary between a St. Augustine and a Lake County candidate.  Safe Republican.

My partisan count for the seats so far are 5R, 1D.

Central Florida districts (FL-5, 8-12, 15, 24 and 27) up next.

Tampa Bay Area

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FL-5 (Rep. Richard Nugent, R-Spring Hill), Yellow

It now covers just 3 counties instead of all or parts of 8 counties in its current form (removed from Lake, Levy, Marion, Polk and Sumter counties), and is designed as an exurban Tampa seat.  It takes most of Citrus and Pasco counties (minus Port Richey and New Port Richey), plus all of Hernando County (Nugent's political base, as he's formerly the Sheriff there).  Safe Republican.  

FL-9 (Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Palm Harbor), Cyan

This district is minimally altered from its present form, except that it loses Clearwater and parts of western Pasco County.  It also exchanges some Tampa suburbs in Hillsborough County
with FL-11 and FL-12.  Bilirakis' home base of Palm Harbor and northern Pinellas County, however, is still here.  Safe Republican.

FL-10 (Rep. C.W. Bill Young, R-Indian Shores), Pink

It gains Clearwater from FL-9, and black parts of St. Peterspurg from FL-11; but loses Dunedin and parts of Palm Harbor to FL-9.  Still totally within Pinellas County, and is the most competitive district in the Tampa Bay area.  Lean Republican with Young, Toss-Up/Tilt Democratic in open seat scenario.

FL-11 (Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Tampa), Light Green

This is the most drastically altered district in the Tampa Bay area, as it is now confined within Hillsborough County.  It lost its arms into Manatee and Pinellas counties, and gains some more conservative suburbs to the east.  It has a lower black percentage but a higher Hispanic percentage than its previous form.  Still plurality white (and 52% white voting age population/VAP).  Castor should be fine if she survives her initial election in this district.  Leans Democratic.

Central Florida

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FL-8 (Rep. Daniel Webster, R-Orlando), Lavender

This district is recast to become solely within metro Orlando (Removed from Lake and Marion counties), it also loses its Osceola County portion to FL-12.  However, it gained southeastern Seminole County (Altamonte Springs and Longwood etc.) and eastern Orange County from FL-24, plus bits of FL-3 and FL-7.   As it subsumes most of the conservative parts of Orange County with a slice of traditionally GOP Seminole County attached to it, Webster should be fine here, although the growth of Hispanic population could make the district more interesting towards the end of the decade.  Likely Republican.

FL-12 (Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Lakeland), Baby Blue

Polk County (formerly split with FL-5 and FL-15) is now entirely within this district.  It loses the Hillsborough County portion to FL-9 and FL-13.  It is less white and more Hispanic (about 22%) than its previous incarnation, thanks to the inclusion of parts of Kissimmee.  For now, Ross should be fine, but it seems likely that this district will undergo  demographic changes similar to FL-8 down the road.  Likely Republican.

FL-15 (Rep. Bill Posey, R-Rockledge), Orange

This district now contains all of Brevard County (previously split with FL-24) and most of rural, less Hispanic portions of Osceola County.  It is removed from staunchly GOP Indian River County and takes most of Okeechobee County that still has hints of local conservative Democratic heritage (but votes GOP in federal races).  Posey should be fine here.  Likely Republican.

FL-24 (Rep. Sandy Adams, R-Orlando), Deep Violet

This district now contains most of Seminole County (Oviedo and Sanford etc.) and virtually all of Volusia County, but removed from Brevard and Orange Counties.  Seminole's GOP heritage should give it a GOP tilt, but a moderate Democrat from Volusia should be competitive here in neutral or Dem-friendly years.  Toss Up/Tilt-Republican.

FL-27 (NEW SEAT, Sky Blue)

The Democratic votes freed up from FL-3 and FL-8 are the basis of this plurality Hispanic (about 33% of VAP) district (plurality white in VAP at about 38%, with 22% black VAP).  It consists of downtown Orlando, black areas in western Orange County, Hispanic portions of eas-central and southern Orange County, and the adjoining heavily Hispanic portions of Osceola county (Kissimmee and environs).  Should be a perfect district for State Reps. Darren Soto or Scott Randolph, both Orlando Democrats, if they want promotion to the Congress.  Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer is another solid candidate for this seat.  Finally, polarizing but wealthy former Rep. Alan Grayson may also want to run here if he wants to return to Congress.  A Puerto Rican Republican, however, can make this race competitive.  Lean Democratic.

My partisan count for these seats are 5R, 2D, 2 swing.
Overall partisan count so far are 10R, 3D, 2 swing.

Southwest Florida, Heartland and Treasure Coast seats (FL-13, 14, 16 and 26) up next.

Southwest Florida

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FL-13 (Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Sarasota), Pale Pink

It gains retiree heavy, fairly conservative southern Hillsborough County suburbs and keeps DeSoto and Hardee counties.  All of Manatee County is now in this district.  The coastal (down to Siesta Key) and the politically moderate northern portions of Sarasota County remains here as well (For those unfamiliar with Sarasota County politics, areas north of Clark Road in Sarasota are generally considered less conservative, and HD-69 in Florida's State House of Representative, held by Sarasota Democrat Keith Fitzgerald for two terms until his 2010 defeat, covers much of this territory).  The more suburban and conservative portion of Sarasota County and its Charlotte County portion are cast off to my new FL-26.  

It is the coastal bastions of Country-Club Republicanism in Manatee and Sarasota counties, the moderate portions of the city of Sarasota and the residual ethical questions with Buchanan that prevents me from calling this district Safe Republican, and Fitzgerald would be the only Democratic candidate who would be remotely competitive in this district.  Likely Republican.

FL-14 (Rep. Connie Mack IV, R-Fort Myers), Olive

It is removed from Charlotte County and loses a northeastern chunk of Lee County to FL-26, but reunites Collier County with the portion from FL-25.  Still one of the most Republican districts in the state.  Safe Republican.

FL-16 (Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta), Mint Green

This is one of two districts I am least satisfied with (The other is my FL-26).  It now unites the Treasure Coast, taking Indian River County from FL-15 and portions of St. Lucie and Martin counties from FL-23.  It also loses most of Okeechobee County to FL-15 and its portion of Hendry County, plus parts of  Glades and Highlands (Lake Placid and parts of Sebring)  counties to FL-26.  Finally, it is totally removed from Charlotte County (also ceding its portion to FL-26).  With St. Lucie being the only swing county in this district, only a moderate Democrat hailing from there, possibly St. Lucie County Sheriff Ken Mascara, can make the race competitive.  Likely Republican.

FL-26 (NEW SEAT), Grey

Population growth in Southwest Florida is likely to result in one of the two new districts to be located in this area.  My FL-26 is such a district.  It takes all of Charlotte County (from FL-13, FL-14 and FL-16), the adjoining portions of Sarasota and Lee counties from FL-13 and FL-14 respectively.  It also takes most of Hendry County and parts of Glades and Highlands counties.  Expect a melee between Republicans from southern Sarasota County (like State Rep. Doug Holder, HD-70, R-Sarasota), Charlotte County (like former State Rep. Michael Grant, HD-71, R-Port Charlotte and State Rep. Paige Kreegel, HD-72, R-Punta Gorda) and Lee County (like former Lt. Governor Jeff Kottkamp) or even Highlands County.  Safe Republican.

My partisan count for this seats: 4R.
Overall partisan count so far are 14R, 3D, 2 swing.

South Florida seats (FL-25 and 17-23) up next.

The DOJ okayed the redistricting amendments that were passed last year. (http://www.tampabay.com/news/us-justice-department-clears-florida-redistricting-amendments/1172887)

Since some forum Republicans have said that Florida is naturally gerrymandered for the GOP with Democratic votes already concentrated (I doubt this is the only reason since the GOP CD bias is stronger in FL than just about everywhere else), can someone draw a map where Obama would win at least 15/27 CD's, but looks ungerrymandered on paper?

I'll try later, but let's think. You can draw a seat in inner Jacksonville with all the black areas, one around Dayton Beach, can get two seats out of Orlando, two out of the Tampa Bay area, two black seats in South Florida, get a barely Obama Cuban seat including the Florida keys (this is what Ros-Lehtinen's district is), and three other Dem seats in South Florida. That's 12. I guess you could get a seat in central Florida if you managed to get Osceola County to St. Lucie.

Depending on how you stretch the limit of "Gerrymandering", you can probably get to 14/27, with 1 in Tallahassee/Mobile/Gainsville, 1 in Jacksonville, 3 in Orlando, 3 in tampa bay/St Petersburg, 1 in SW Floride by connecting all the major cities together from Brandenton to Cape Coral, and 8 or 9 in SOuth Florida if you crack the Cubans enough.  That's 17 or 18, but involves some clear Gerrymandering to do.

The Biggest problem is that Florida has a bunch of like 53-57% McCain counties in it.  Polk county for example is about 500,000 people and 53% McCain--something you could theoretically connect to some heavily Democratic territory to flip, but unless you finger it to West Orlando or Tampa (Which are busy flipping other seats to Obama Seats) there's just no territory like that nearby.  Just more 55% McCain counties.

If "Obama district" by 18 votes is good enough for you, you can get one out of Ocala and Marion Counties with the less disfavorable bits of Putnam and Citrus attached, and no unnecessary county splits to the north. (I suppose the 18 votes thing can be improved on, but not by much.) Though I dare say the remnant third with rural counties between Tallahassee, Gainesville and Jacksonville plus the northern and western edges of Jacksonville does look unnatural - though something somewhat like it may actually happen anyways.
But what bugs me is the district with Tallahassee and Panama City and the rural blacks nearby. Drawn "naturally" with no regards to gerrymandering, it's 52.odd McCain... but the most I could move that without altering the design radically (and obvious gerrymandering) is to 51.8.

Okay, here's my inoffensive-at-first-glance democratic dummymander (for it is a dummymander, not a gerrymander) of North and Central Florida.
No additional county splits. The minemadge seat had to go, of course.

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CD1 (West Florida, not shown) 67.7% McCain
CD2 (West Florida, Tallahassee) 52.0% McCain. Can't flip that one without major works.
CD3 (purple remnants district around the Suwannee River) 67.1% McCain
CD4 (Jacksonville) 53.4% Obama
CD5 (Gainesville, Ocala) 50.7% Obama
CD6 (east coast) 58.7% McCain
CD7 (South Pinellas) 55.5% Obama
CD8 (Polk County) 53.0% McCain. Another seat that would, sadly, take major reworking to flip. I suppose you could maybe gain another Obama seat by carving the county up.
CD9 (turquoise thing north of that) 56.0% McCain
CD10 (West Pasco, North Pinellas, NW Hillsborough) 51.3% Obama
CD11 (West Orlando) 60.0% Obama
CD12 (Osceola, East Orlando) 58.6% Obama. Technically "coalition" districts both.
CD13 (Seminole, SW Volusia) 50.4% Obama. And yeah, the Orange precincts to drop in were chosen wisely.
CD14 (Central Hillsborough) 54.5% Obama. And yeah, you guessed right why it's so thin in the middle. Seats to the north and south need those areas.
CD15 (Bradenton, South Hillsborough, parts of Sarasota) 50.3% Obama.

9-6 Obama so far. Parts south just aren't so interesting. Not going to do them.

Eh... ignore that one purple precinct in Alachua.

I see no one has submitted a map preserving the current 3rd so far. It can be done. It shouldn't be done and it probably won't be done, but it can be done.

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68% Obama, Black plurality VAP (40.5-39.8).
The yellow Orange County district is Obama by 10. The ones northeast and southeast of it are marginal McCain districts that might become an issue if trends in the area continue.

So there's still a Dem seat in the Orlando area? Exactly the reason the GOP wouldn't want to do this. Better to just make the Orlando seat the Dem pack one.

Plus 10 points for Obama isn't necessarily enough to elect the Glorious One Alan Grayson. I want a much stronger district.

BTW something I just realized about Allen West: As unpopular as the Ryan budget is nationwide, for fairly obvious reasons it is probably more unpopular in his district than any other district held by a Republican, even in its current abomination of a form. Meaning West would be in huge trouble in even the current seat if it was somehow preserved.

Democrats might not be happy if Brown's district is dismantled. You can easily draw a slightly-McCain district in Jacksonville without it looking like a gerrymander.

Ugly as it is, the Jacksonville-to-Tallahassee seat probably gives the parties, ahm, security. I suppose it's what the smart money is on. Though the corridor to Gainesville will probably not be justifiable on VRA grounds and thus be out the window under the legislation adopted. Anyways, as long as it doesn't get its own seat along with Ocala, Gainesville can easily be swallowed up into a Republican seat.

But we get a new Democratic seat in Orlando in return. And Brown is useless and corrupt, but we all know what American hero the Orlando seat could elect...

Would a 60-40 Obama district in Orlando consistently elect Grayson? Considering how he was thrashed in 2010, I am guessing he would lose even in that Democratic of a district. Nominating Grayson again would be a mistake, even if he somehow does win that district in 2012.

I actually checked it, and an Orlando-based Dem Pack district (which is what the Republicans will probably draw since it's legal and makes all the others around it Safe R) would probably be about 70-30.  The area west of Orlando is like 90% Obama (it's the part the 3rd was brought down to get) so that plus the 65% Obama parts of the city proper should be safe enough, even for a bomb-thrower like Grayson.

Granted, Republicans have won stronger D Districts, but usually against horribly corrupt incumbents.  However Grayson extremely poor performance and bombastic style means Orlando might just make an exception, although said Republican would be gone the next election almost certainly.  The biggest problem for Grayson will be winning the Democratic primary in what will probably be a heavily minority seat.

First citizen submission.

in pdf (http://censusvalidator.blob.core.windows.net/mydistrictbuilderdata/Public%20Redistricting%20Plan%20Submissions/HPUBC0001_Ortiz_Nicholas_A_8x11.pdf).

A further note on the Corrine Brown district: It appears to be only just about possible to draw a Black plurality district Jacksonville to Gadsden, with a spike into Gainesville. (It appears to be impossible without.) The best I got so far was 45.3-44.8 total population, which of course translates as a more than 5 point White plurality in the VAP.
It is possible to draw it into Orlando. It's not really what either party will want... but they may not have much choice. Unless they decide that there's no community of interest between Jacksonville and Orlando Blacks, and risk a court challenge (which, depending on the rest of the map, may or may not have Democratic political support) to that. It probably makes sense, then, to assume that it will continue in existence.

Even with a spike into Orlando, trying to deny the Democrats all other seats in the Orlando area would be a dummymander of the worst type. Of course even then the Democratic seat might be strong enough for our hero.

I don't think Grayson would have too much trouble in a primary even in a majority-minority seat. There's only two State Reps I see being serious and likely candidates, one is also white, the other is half Italian and half Puerto Rican. There's only one Democratic State Senator from the area, and while he is black, he was convicted of a felony in his first term for misuse of his office but was re-elected anyway (even though this means that he couldn't even vote for himself amusingly enough.) I think we can rule him out.

It certainly guarantees the Dems the 1 seat in North Florida while the GOP takes all the rest.

You can shut the Democrats out entirely by splitting Duval properly and attaching to the heavy Dem parts to Nassau County.

The only 2 questions I see are whether they yield 1 Orlando seat (most likely), or 2, and of course Pinellas County. Water contiguity abuse for Tampa/St. Petersburg isn't barred by the amendment.

Or even adding St. Pete to areas to its south, and putting the rest of Pinnelas in one district. That could be done as well, though that could make that district too swingy for the GOP's taste.

Even if it doesn't specifically bar water contiguity abuse, it's tough to argue that areas that are not contiguously accessible except by boat constitute a "community of interest". If the GOP just opts to simply ignore the requirements altogether (not unlikely) they're just asking for a lawsuit, which could result in a court-drawn map, and thus an actually fair one.

St. Petersburg and Tampa are connected by a bridge, so that's not really an issue.

But I do think a black Jacksonville to Tallahassee seat might not be something the GOP would oppose, Democrats do better in Jacksonville locally so the Jacksonville seat would be at best a swing district without violating the VRA by splitting up and diluting the black precincts, and FL-02 is still a swing district too. In fact it may have even voted for Sink. So just conceding one seat in northern Florida rather than risk losing two might be seen as the better option.


But still it's tough to argue the part of St. Petersburg in FL-11 is part of a "community of interest" with the rest of the district.

Between the Devil Rays, the lightning, the cross newspaper delivery, among other things, the 2 cities certainly have things in common. They're urban cores of the same metro area.

I guess you'd have to place a Republican district in North Pinellas, the Castor district cutting across the bridge, and another Republican district entirely in Hillsborough.

The St. Petersburg, Tampa connection would probably be a violation, there's no logical reason to do so other than partisanship and the amendments prohibit that. The only reason it's drawn like that is to protect Young and it's borderline racial gerrymandering at that.

A Jacksonville-Tallahassee district may not stand up, being only plurality, the VRA is not always applied to such seats and it would be an obvious racial gerrymander. Depending on how you maneuver, you can get an Obama district or a McCain one completely within Duval County, down to about R+1.

And how about a Tallahassee to Gainesville district?

Of course there is. You have to make that county crossing anyway somewhere, and the other option splits Clearwater in half.

There's no reason why splitting Clearwater is better than splitting St. Petersburg.

Here is a map of the Clearwater municipal borders; it is clear that the map that was posted a couple pages back does not adhere to them.

http://www.clearwater-fl.com/services/gis.asp

You can fit most of Clearwater in with St. Petersburg, some precincts won't fit, but from the standpoint of compactness, it keeps Pinellas County from be divided up too much and that's one of the goals of the amendments.

That doesn't make any sense. Pinellas is split 2 ways regardless and Hillsborough is split 3 ways regardless. There is no need to put another district in either county.

'Compactness' has never been seriously litigated. Heck, even Illinois has a compactness standard and look at that map. Or the New Jersey legislative map which splits Somerset county at least 6 ways and has 1 district zig zag through 4 counties.

In addition, Clearwater is the Pinellas County seat and it certainly does not make much sense to split the county seat in a Pinellas district.

That doesn't make any sense. Pinellas is split 2 ways regardless and Hillsborough is split 3 ways regardless. There is no need to put another district in either county.

'Compactness' has never been seriously litigated. Heck, even Illinois has a compactness standard and look at that map. Or the New Jersey legislative map which splits Somerset county at least 6 ways and has 1 district zig zag through 4 counties.

In addition, Clearwater is the Pinellas County seat and it certainly does not make much sense to split the county seat in a Pinellas district.
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It makes perfect sense. If you bring the Tampa district into St. Petersberg just to keep FL-10 Republican, then you're going to end up with three district in Pinellas County, when there should only be two.

Other states have nothing to do with this, the amendments in Florida are very clear and county splitting is supposed to be kept at minimum and population doesn't dictate that Pinellas be split three ways. There is not point to it other than partisanship.

The VRA doesn't work like that. Brown's current seat was only black plurality when it was first drawn in 1992 and there was no court order or anything. At the time the Democrats controlled the redistricting though they had many Dixiecrats in their ranks and many Dixiecrats in north Florida congressional districts. The Republicans wanted to open up some districts by drawing this seat to get the blacks all in one district. They were backed by Brown and some other black state legislators and thus were able to force the district in the new map. Basically it's a Dem pack seat that just happens to have blacks as the Democrats who are being packed (though there's also Gainesville liberals).

What would be a VRA violation would be splitting up the black parts of Jacksonville into separate districts to dilute them and get them into all Republican seats. Which is why the Republicans would probably prefer the pack route, which also would get Tallahassee out of a now swing district too.


The Democrats would draw a district like that if they were controlling the gerrymandering. Don't see it happening any other way.

I do know why the district was created and that is was never really a VRA seat. My point was that a seat like that cannot be drawn under the amendments and it really can't be protected by the VRA, since it would only be plurality black or maybe not even that. I do know the VRA works and plurality districts aren't really seen as being protected under it by the courts.

One thing I think the Republicans have realized though is that trying to deny the Democrats any seats in Orlando can't be anything but a dummymander, even without the fair districts requirements. The current map sort of reflects this even, while the current FL-08 is a gerrymandered monstrosity it still voted for Obama and is a bad fit for Webster against anyone but Grayson. Webster needs a far safer district and you can't draw one without endangering other incumbents or having a Dem pack seat in metro Orlando. The chutzpa of the Florida Republicans is part of the reason I hate the state, but even they have to realize you can't draw all Republican districts in an area that voted for Obama by double digits.

What on earth is the 3rd district?

You have 1 district for all of Pinellas and the most GOP part of St. Petersburg (still voted for Obama 50.3%), and the other district for the rest of St. Petersburg and Tampa and a few inner suburbs. You can fit a remaining district in the rest of Hillsborough County.

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The only issue is that it cuts Bilirakis out of his house, but he will have to move rather than yield the 10th district, which Bill Young wants for his son now that Jr. is 25.

I was assuming you were talking about maintaining the current gerrymander. Anyway, that district is barely conterminous and it doesn't really make sense for any reason other than partisanship, which is not a valid reason under the amendments.

Is Bill Young's son seriously only 25? He would've had to be in his 50s when he had him.

That district doesn't even have a bridge connection. That's the sort of thing the Republicans can try and end up getting their whole map tossed out in court.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/local/article448561.ece

I think he was born in 85. Curious how he didn't hand the seat down in 2010, perhaps that wasn't his intention after all.

I guess I missed the Gandy Bridge by a precinct. Easily fixable.

Maybe if Allen Boyd had somehow barely survived 2010 and a bipartisan incumbent protection plan a la California2000 was happening.Four.
Seriously. It's dead. What they'll do is tamper with the lines a bit so that the wholly Pinellas district is only 54.5% Obama and not 56.0% as it could be, and hope Bill Young can hold it for a while yet.

I don't think Boyd would want that seat. Remember, he was almost primaried in the current seat in 2010 despite it being obvious there would be no chance whatsoever of holding it without hiim. Add in Gainesville and he'd be more dead in the water than Orrin Hatch.

I'd like to mention to all of you talking about where members of congress have their houses in relation to districts, that in Florida, you DO NOT have to live in your district to run for it.  I could live in Jacksonville and run for a seat in Miami.  I know this because I'm from Florida and I know several examples of elected officials not living in their districts.

No state can legally require a candidate to live in a Congressional district to run for it. The Constitution says that the only requirements for serving in the House of Representatives are a. being 25 years old, b. being a US citizen for 7 years, and c. "inhabiting" the state you're elected from at the time you're elected. It's the same reason that state laws on Congressional term limits were ruled unconstitutional. Still, though, most Congressmen prefer to live in (or at least maintain their non-DC residence in) their own districts, for a number of reasons.

In South Florida, Allen West doesn't live in his serpentine district.  But I'm sure glad that he is my representative.

Diaz-Balart and Brown have lost their ridiculous lawsuit claiming that a law that explicitly requires district boundaries to respect the VRA violates the VRA (http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/09/2397740/us-judge-hears-arguments-in-fla.html).

This quote right here is particularly disgusting:

"The people of Florida never had the power to do anything with respect to congressional redistricting"

Anyone who honestly believes that the people of the US don't have the right to establish completely reasonable rules regarding the redistricting process doesn't really believe in representative democracy.

That means GOOD RIDDANCE Brown and in her place the return of a true progressive hero....

ALAN GRAYSON ALAN GRAYSON ALAN GRAYSON ALAN GRAYSON ALAN GRAYSON ALAN GRAYSON ALAN GRAYSON ALAN GRAYSON ALAN GRAYSON ALAN GRAYSON ALAN GRAYSON ALAN GRAYSON ALAN GRAYSON ALAN GRAYSON ALAN GRAYSON ALAN GRAYSON ALAN GRAYSON ALAN GRAYSON!

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See Justice Stevens dissent in California Democratic Party v Jones (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=000&invol=99-401#section3) in Part II.

In a representative democracy, why is there a need for the People to legislate directly, bypassing their representatives?  That doesn't seem to be consistent with a belief in representative democracy.

Amen, BRTD!

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Highlighted for contrast. They are very different statements. (Also, it's a dissent. Oh, and the answer is obvious: Because of gerrymandering. ;) )

As you may have noticed, none of the litigants raised the issue of the use of the initiative.  Judges ordinarily won't rule based on issues not raised in the trial briefs.  And the other judges probably wanted to rule on the juicier details of the case (1st Amendment political associational rights is a lot more fun to argue than cogs and gears procedural issues).

In another related case, Tashjian, the issue of whether a state had to use the same electorate for congressional primaries as they used for legislative primaries was raised.  This was based on a 1940s decision that the primary was part of an election.  The case outlawed the white primary, and was one of the first cases won by Thurgood Marshall.  Justice Marshall wrote the majority opinion in Tashjian, and so was forced to acknowledge that primaries were elections.  He then wandered in circles explaining why that didn't apply to the present case.  When a Nebraska Attorney General read the opinion, he said he thought it applied to Nebraska, but that no one could be sure until a court ruled on the issue.  The rest of the Marshall opinion then dealt with 1st Amendment issues.

Justice Stevens wrote a dissent that the legislative/congressional conflict meant that the 1st Amendment issues were moot.  Justice Scalia concurred with the Stevens dissent.  But then he went on to argue the 1st Amendment issues in his own dissent.   (ie Scalia had lost the argument on 1st Amendment issues, and decided to try to derail the court on the procedural issue).

So Stevens was trying to provoke future litigants to raise the issue of the initiative process, and since he was dissenting on the 1st Amendment issue he went ahead and added it in.  Justice Ginsberg concurred in the 1st Amendment issue, but didn't join the initiative issue part of the dissent.  This doesn't mean that she didn't agree with Stevens, but simply that she didn't think the issue was relevant to that case.  Similarly, we don't know whether or not the other justices agreed with Stevens or not.

So it is clearly not a settled issue.  The closest relevant cases dealt with procedural aspects of the legislation process.  In one, the Supreme Court ruled that a gubernatorial veto meant that the legislature had not legislated - had not provided manner regulations.  In another case, there had been a referendum on a congressional redistricting plan, which the Supreme Court upheld.  But in Florida, the People were providing the content of legislation and not just involved in process.

The judge in Florida clearly didn't understand that nuance.

And there have been cases where administrative actions by the executive branch have been overturned because they were "legislating".

If one believes in representative democracy, what do they believe?   Fundamentally doesn't it mean that one believes that the government should be formed by representatives elected by the People, who then act on behalf of the People?

Hopefully, the case will get appealed.

With a Republican-appointed court, the Florida GOP probably has enough wiggle-room within the regulations to limit Democratic gains to (at most) nine 'reasonably safe' (at least 55.0%) seats and one swing district that leans slightly Democratic (as well about ten swing districts that lean Republican); if Bill Young chooses to run in a 'natural' St. Petersburg seat (about 56.3% Democrat), then there is a reasonable chance that he would win.  Barring a nationwide landslide, the best-case scenario for the Republicans therefore seems to be 19-8.

The VRA will enable at leat three hispanic seats (including one Democratic coastal district) and one black seat centered around Miami-Dade, and its likely that the gerrymandered Alcee Hastings seat will be protected as well.  Interestingly, it seems that the Republicans would probably do better with an Orlando vote sink than they would with a majority-black Corrine Brown district (at least it seems that way within the limitations of DRA), as the latter seems to produce two extra Democratic-leaning swing districts.

I wonder if the VRA will protect Corrine Brown's extreme gerrymander?

If were based solely on the proportion of the population there would be 6 Hispanic and 4 Black majority districts.

The spread-out nature of the minority population in Florida prohibits that; its well-documented enough that Republicans should have no additional problems on that front.  The question is whether Corrine Brown's district (I don't think its technically a VRA district, but the rulings on this matter are anything but consistent) is protected, given the fact that it could easily be made into an extremely ugly VRA district.

All that said, I'm still pretty new at redistricting politics and gaming, so it wouldn't be that surprising if I missed something. 

Brown's district is not VRA protected, it's not 50% Black and completely violates the amendments passed. That's why Brown was fighting so hard against it, there's no way that she could survive under a clean map.

I suppose we could consider the New Zealand system.

If my findings are correct, then I hope you're right; it just doesn't seem that there are any consistent standards for this, though.  As an example, do you think the courts would have allowed the Georgia Republicans to turn Sanford Bishop's district into a 'leaning Republican' swing district (it wouldn't have been difficult) if they so desired?  The fact that it's technically possible to make the district majority-black without any major alterations might make the courts decide in Corrine Brown's favor.  The VRA (as interpreted by the courts) trumps other redistricting regulations after all....

FL-3 is over 50% black VAP by counting black alone or in combination with other races. The difficulty is keeping it over 50% while adding almost 40 K people to bring it up to the required population.

Bishop's district was only plurality black overall and plurality by VAP, it wasn't really protected. They could have attempted that, but it was more in their interest to put more black voters into Bishop's district to strengthen a neighboring district.

Brown's district was drawn as a Democratic vote sink. You got get it to 50%, but it would make for a very oddly drawn district, which the courts probably wouldn't like.


It's about 44% Black in VAP now. With it possible to draw a compact minority-majority district in Orlando, that could clearly be seen as a successor district to Brown's current seat, at least it could to the court.

I'm not sure where you get the 44% from. The US Census 2010 data reports that the single race BVAP is 48.9% for FL-03. There is an additional 1.5% VAP who report black in combination with another race. They count as well, so the total is over 50%.

I was looking at the redistricting app. Even with the 50%, the shape is what is the problem. NC-12 was struck down more than once because of how it was drawn. The courts do look at compactness to some extent even for the VRA.

The main thing is that Brown's seat was never drawn but because of the VRA, but by Brown herself backed by Republicans who wanted to use the district as a vote sink. It's nothing more than a standard Dem pack district.

The courts require compactness when necessary. NC-12 in 1992 was majority-black, but it failed to show the compelling state interest that justified the shape. The version from later in the decade was not a majority-black district, and eventually survived as a political but not racial gerrymander. IL-04 has survived because the non-compact form was the only way to achieve the VRA-protected district the past 20 years, and that did count as a compelling state interest.

I used DRA to get a new CD 3 that was over 49% BVAP. It's heavily gerrymandered with thinner connectors. I'm confident that it could break 50% at the block level, and probably does already if dual race white+black are added to the total (that's the DOJ standard).

Even though its ugly, it may be needed. FL is a section 5 state and that means its is subject to the no retrogression provision. Reducing the number of black-majority districts from 3 to 2 would be retrogression, and such a plan could fail a section 5 challenge. The compactness and respect for political boundaries in the new constitutional amendment are second tier requirements and explicitly defer to protection of racial and language minorities.

Here we go. The State Senate's Congressional draft.

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CD10 and CD11 are brought to you by "Screw you Fair Districts Amendment!"

And 22 looks just as ugly as before.

Not to mention Orange County...

Certainly quite a bit better than before. Although that isn't saying much.

Basically, obeying the law except where it would hurt them.

With a hilarious consequence in the mainland part of Monroe. :D

Also, it's like they knew some areas would be litigated and revised so they may as well just use a broad brush in Microsoft Paint.

Alcee Hastings lives in Pembroke Pines and is drawn out of his district.

Yep. A lot of the white Republican districts are cleaned up. John Mica for instance is placed out of his district.

'Compactness' is of course exceptionally difficult to litigate.

His tendril to Winter Park was lost and Daniel Webster gained a tendril to Winter Park.

I am confused as to what the purpose of that is other than to make the new district as Hispanic as possible. I believe its Hispanic VAP is in the 40s.

And the purpose of that is... to make that double split of Orange and Polk easier to defend in court?

Looking at South Florida... the 23rd lost its southern extension, wonder how much to the Dem side it moved (nothern part of the gerry is of course easily defended because it borders a Black district, so no surprises it doesn't change much). Debbie Schultz gets a saner district.
21st is weird, but partly covered by precedent (a slightly larger part of Collier is currently in the 25th, and Hendry is split roughly across that same line though with a different district in the western half.)

Lawsuit time! The most likely result probably being the best too, that abomination being tossed a court-drawn map put in its place.

Though at least even under that Allen West is probably still toast and the Democrats could take FL-27 (though it'd have to be with someone other than Alan Grayson...which alone is enough reason to fight to get it tossed.)

27 is a safe Democratic seat. It might still not end up as drawn - that 8th tendril is difficult to defend.
The only other part I would think problematic is 10/11.
There's no way the 3rd will be tossed if the legislature won't do it, I'm afraid.
Somewhere seen it claimed that West's new district is 55% Obama - not enough to doom him, but not favored against a strong challenger. The 16th is apparently also going to be highly swingy.

Well as long as Grayson can get elected in the 27th I'm fine with that. :D

Can you elaborate as to why not? I thought it wasn't VRA protected, and without that, it surely violates Fair Districts.

FL22 is now 56% Obama. West would probably be gone under this map.

The Fair Districts Amendment has its own VRA-type language, though, that explicitly takes precedent over compactness requirements.


Note the bolded parts. If it goes to court and the legislature justifies the 3rd district by arguing that it was necessary to prevent the "abridging of equal opportunity for racial minorities to elect representatives of their choice," then the compactness requirements would be thrown out the window for that district.

The more problematic jut seems to be 11 into Manatee County. I can't quite eyeball it but it appears to be there.

Is 21 a Collier or a Dade district?

It is pretty cool that 3 can be widened or not so that the other districts are nice whole counties.

The Redistricting Litigation And Lawyer Enrichment Amendment to the Florida Constitution provides a separate state provision for racial gerrymandering.

http://www.clearinghouse.net/chDocs/public/VR-FL-0151-0005.pdf

Page 42-44.



Prior litigation upholding the existing FL-03.

Pre-FRA and thus irrelevant, although the court may not throw it out anyway.

I have a tough time seeing the FL-10/11 split being protected by that though, resulting in that being tossed.

West's seat if 56% Obama probably will vote closer to a 53% Obama district as Obama overran a bit among some demographics in that area and it tends to favor GOP candidates a little more on downballot races, but that might still be too strong for West. They're probably hoping for another Republican to eventually win it. So if we get that and FL-27 and the GOP get the new seat in FL-26 it's overall D+2 with the R seats unchanged, though FL-10 could certainly flip too if not upheld. In fact even the current district would be competitive without Young, who has to go sometime.

What is your problem with 11?

There is road connectivity between Tampa and St Petersburg; Tampa and Bradenton; and St Petersburg and Bradenton.  The district is compact, and it has a substantial minority population.

FL-27 should elect a hispanic Dem, although Alan Grayson might be able to win the primary there. This map appears to end Allen West's career, the guy is a bit crazy and probably would have had a tough fight anyway. Kerry likely won 53-54% in FL-22 so West is fighting an uphill battle. FL-25 could also be competitive b/c Rivera's ethics issues and it went from a small McCain win to slight Obama. The 16th can go Dem in a wave year but Rooney is fairly well-liked and will hold it despite being 51-52% Obama barring a tsunami year for Dems.

Just because the state once created it for reasons (officially) other than VRA doesn't mean it'll make that claim this time. Besides, what's been pointed out about FDA.

Technically, of course, the issue is with FL 9 and 11 rather than 10 and 11. The 10th would have to be changed to rectify it though.
Unnecessary double county split with very very poor excuses beyond political gerrymandering. Certainly does reduce compactness.
And yeah, they jutted into Manatee as well. I don't need to verify that on a map with better color choices - I know a Manatee and Sarasota district needs to shed a tiny bit of territory, and they drew it well into Charlotte. Again, very easily avoidable, by switching around areas with the 12th, which btw is an exceedingly odd district - something does need to give around there, though.

I would like to share this document (http://censusvalidator.blob.core.windows.net/mydistrictbuilderdata/PublicInput/KeyDecisions_CongressionalSubcommittee.pdf); take note especially of which options it does not pursue.

If I'm reading the map correctly, you have to take different routes northbound and southbound to establish connectivity between the southern portion and the rest of the district. The gerrymandered finger heading south to scoop up Dem voters gets very narrow and the state senate's maps shows the boundary separating northbound and southbound lanes on the few roads in the connector.

Similarly, you can go north from Bradenton and stay within the district, but going south, the other lane of the highway is in a different district. So if you start in Bradenton and head north, the district is contiguous by road and such, but not the other direction.

One thing to consider re FL3 is of course that if the Orlando area had two urban focused districts, they could both be coalition districts. And the urban Jacksonville district that would then probably result would be barely over 50% Anglo.

The proposed 3rd district is 49.96% Black VAP, btw. :D (Including Black Hispanics, of which Orlando has a few. Most of them in the 27th, though, apparently.)
The 27th is plurality Anglo VAP.

e.g.

()

1st 45% Anglo, 27% Black, 20% Hispanic (DRA figures o/c), 49-25-18 on VAP, 59.4% Obama
2nd 40, 10, 44 (44, 9, 41), 61.0% Obama
3rd 68, 9, 17 (71, 9, 16), 49.8% Obama, would be safe Republican.

Placing one or more districts entirely in a county and having parts of 2 districts extending into other counties does not always respect county boundaries in the best way possible.  States like Ohio and Texas have formal provisions for drawing lines like you suggest, and they don't always work so well.  It seems like a good idea, but it isn't necessarily so.

Let's imagine the districts were drawn in the way you appear to want.  You slide the Pinellas peninsular district to the tip.  You have to then have the next district overlap in Hillsborough and probably chop an arbitrary piece of Tampa.  You still end up with an extra piece of Hilsborough.

And remember, the Florida Constitution says that racial gerrymandering is more important than compactness or recognizing political boundaries.

That's why they need an exception clause (or just be not formulated as absolute commands in the first place.) Political gerrymandering is not a valid exception.
??? You're chopping fewer arbitrary pieces of Tampa if you don't draw the Tampa district into St Petersburg and Bradenton for no good reason.

And remember, the Florida Constitution says that racial gerrymandering is more important than compactness or recognizing political boundaries.
[/quote]True... but not at issue here. This is not a minority-opportunity district under any sane standard - considerably less so than either of the two Orlando districts I drew above (and the Jacksonville district that goes with them), say. This is a 50-25-25 White-Black-Hispanic district.

And a purely Tampa district, with some minor attention to racial breakdowns, comes out 49% Anglo anyways. (More Hispanics and fewer Blacks though.)

Let's see. If every incumbent receives a favorable district, that favoring incumbents. But, if some incumbent receives a less favorable district, that's disfavoring a particular incumbent! And, what is "[dis]favoring an incumbent?" In 99% of the cases, it is [dis]favoring his political party. In the vast majority of cases adding more Republicans helps a Republican incumbent, while a Democrat is best favored by adding Democrats to his district.

New districts would have to be swing districts, else the new district "favors" some party. That is unless new minority districts can be drawn, then, that district can "favor" the candidate of choice of that minority.

But, if we consider "plans" rather than individual districts, we have meta-level claims about overall "partisan fairness," whatever that means. That seems to mean electing more Democrats, which requires redrawing the districts of some Republicans so they are more likely to lose, which is, itself, another violation!

The amendment wasn't designed to reform redistricting. It was designed to spawn litigation with the purpose of moving redistricting to the Courts.

The only way it seems possible to meet the standard is to draw districts so that every Republican incumbent has a slightly less Republican district, [presumably excluding West and Riveria whom would be "disfavored" by any shift at all towards the Democrats] and every Democrat incumbent a slightly less Democratic district, but, not so much that they are seriously jeopardized. Of course, this would have to be done without even calculating the partisan effects of the maps!
 

Note that it doesn't say that districts can't favor incumbents, but that they can't be drawn with the intent to do so. And determining intent for something like this is, of course, extremely difficult and litigious- moreso than even what you've mentioned.

I haven't done any research on the amendment's background so I don't know if you're correct regarding its designed purpose (I wouldn't be surprised, rather, if the amendment's backers were just a bunch of well-intentioned idiots) but given how badly that amendment is written, I think you're right regarding the end result. I don't see how the Florida Supreme Court won't end up drawing the map.

The findings of fact are still in place. Those include that FL-03 is compact, complies with traditional redistricting principles, and is not drawn primarily on race.

I'm not sure where this idea came from.

Prior court opinion states that FL-03 was drawn in 2002 as a black performing district and that such was intentional, and that such was fully consistent with a legal plan.

Doesn't mean there won't be a lawsuit about it! First, that was from a case in federal court regarding the VRA, whereas any new lawsuit will be in state court over the racial minority standards of the FDA- which might end up with a very different interpretation. Someone could make the case that the district was drawn with the intent to help an incumbent or political party, the prevention of which under the FRA is of equal importance to ensuring minority representation. Also note that the amendment's wording even seems to suggest that not favoring incumbents is more important than all Federal law.

Yeah... this stuff is definitely going to court.

Yes, of course there will be a lawsuit about it. I just don't see how it can get anywhere in federal court as it has not over a decade now. In state court they will surely make the exact argument you already posted.

In fact they already are making that argument.


Incidentally the 2002 district court was careful enough not to address whether FL-03 was a 'required' district per se. They merely said it was valid, which is of course good enough for the GOP's purpose.

To the extent that the FDA language goes further than the VRA that could be litigated. If the FDA language is less expansive, the issue is moot until, and unless, the VRA is repealed/struck_down.

The FDA language seems to go further than the VRA in treating French-speaking Haitians as a distinct language group, rather than as generic "Blacks." I doubt there is a Haitian district to be drawn. Other than that, there isn't any there there.

Wait... haha, oh wow. I've just realized something here.

Hispanics are an ethnic minority, not a racial minority. If you recall, on the census forms this year, they even explicitly stated that "Hispanic origins are not a race." The census this year also didn't ask any data about language, so there's not even any simple quantitative way to determine anything about "language minorities."

Does this mean that Hispanics aren't covered under the FDA, unless they can figure out a way to accurately guestimate the number and locations of native Spanish speakers who speak English poorly enough to be considered a "language minority"?

Furthermore, wouldn't this mean that the state legislature somehow has to prove that "no incumbent or party was intended to benefit" from the heavily Republican and incumbent-friendly Cuban districts in Miami-Dade, since under the FRA that requirement has higher priority than abiding by the VRA?

Oh boy, it's the highway to litigation hell!

The problem with the last claim is that it isn't true. Section 3) explicitly denies any prioritization.

The Florida law talks of "racial or language minority". While that is a different word (and community survey data on language use exist), the intent is clear I believe.

It only denies prioritization for factors that are within the same subsection :)

Note that Subsection 2 specifies that its standards aren't required if they conflict with the "standards in Subsection 1 or with Federal law," while Subsection 1 states its requirements as standards that must be followed- seemingly, even if they contradict Federal law. Hell, if the Florida GOP really wanted to, they could probably get the whole amendment thrown out by the Federal courts for violating the Supremacy Clause.


Fair enough. After doing some research, it turns out the VRA uses the term "language minority group" to cover Hispanics as well, so the intent is definitely clear.

The backers were the LWV, which would qualify as well-meaning; and several racial advocacy groups including the Florida NAACP, and Democracia Ahora (Democracy Now).  

When showing what they considered were bad districts, they avoided showing CD-3 or the districts along the Gold Coast.   Voters probably thought of those districts, but didn't realize that the amendment would do nothing to eliminate them.

When the legislative committee announced their statewide hearing tour last summer, these groups including the ACLU, launched a publicity campaign for the legislature to "show us your map" apparently in an attempt to build a legal case on "intent of the legislature", and accused the committee of muzzling legislators.  What actually happened was that they were interested in listening to the general public.

The Florida Constitution requires redistricting be done in the -2 year.  The legislature did deliberately call a special redistricting session in January 2012; and the Florida Constitution permits prefiling of legislation and committee hearings before a session, which is why the plans have just now been pre-released.   Any map proposed by a legislator last summer would have been idle musing of individual legislators.

The newspaper articles included quotes from Gerald Hebert (Hee-Burt, not Eh-Bear) of the "Campaign Legal Center" that hearings were dog and pony shows.  Hebert is a frequent lawyer for Democrats in redistricting cases and used to work for the USDOJ.  In 2000, he was working for Martin Frost going around to hearings in Texas pointing out how the legislature back in the 1960s had made Joe Pool run statewide in order to protect incumbents such as Sam Rayburn and Wright Patman.  This was all to establish a state policy of protecting incumbents if the court had to draw the districts.

Joe Pool had run for Congress from a district and lost.  This was quite remarkable, since he was the only Democrat to lose in Texas.  Moreover, he received as many votes as Rayburn and Patman combined.   Joe Pool was from Dallas, and at that time Dallas County was a single district, the most populous in the country at the time according to a footnote in Wesberry v Sanders with 960,000 persons.   After the 1960 census, when Texas gained two districts, rather than add districts, they were elected at large, and Joe Pool ran and won.  There is no evidence that the State of Texas forced him to run at large.

(George HW) Bush v Martin was in the courts requiring equal population congressional districts.  It was only a matter of timing that the SCOTUS ruled on Wesberry first.  So Hebert was arguing on behalf of Frost on incumbent protection, but based on the Democrats really denying voters in urban areas the right to vote, because they would vote for a Republican.  After Texas did provide equal population districts, Texas had 3 Republican Congressmen.

You can bet that Hebert will be a lawyer in the Florida case after the legislature finalizes its map and Scott signs it.

The whole purpose of the initiative was to have the Florida Supreme Court draw the map.  The LWV might have been useful idiots.

The VRA is to enforce the 14th and 15th amendments.  Congress would claim that they were ensuring "equal protection" for an identifiable class of persons (ethnic minority) against discrimination (failure to racially gerrymander) on the basis of that identification.  Since "race" and "color" are actually rather meaningless classifications, it could be argued that the 15th Amendment is really about protecting ethnic minorities, whose identity may only partially be based on race.

The ACS does include questions about language and citizenship, and is statistically reliable over a 5-year period for small areas, census tracts and block groups.  It has definitely been used in Texas for determining the HCVAP and will likely be used in Florida, especially since some groups such as Haitian Creoles and non-Cuban and non-Puerto Rican Hispanics will have extremely low citizenship rates.

Dade.
442k Dade, 88% Hispanic, 56.8% McCain
157k Collier, 53% Anglo, 36% Hispanic, 57.8% McCain
76k Broward, 50% Hispanic, 23% Black, 18% Anglo, 35.3% McCain
19k Hendry, 54% Hispanic, 41% White, 59.9% McCain

Though they did have to pick up a pretty good (population) chunk of Collier.  

Drawing three Hispanic districts in Dade alone is foolproof easy, but three Republican Hispanic seats is not. Going to Collier instead of drawing a district of Collier + Lee south of the Caloosahatchee not just makes that easier, it also makes the map look better in a couple of places elsewhere, worse in a lot more others, and helps with keeping West's district winnable.

I know very little about Florida demographics, but based on all this, do you think there's enough basis here for someone to make a case that this violates the Fair Redistricting Amendment?

Since most Hispanics down there are Cuban, and most Cubans vote Republican, would making all three Hispanic districts Republican be required to maintain the "equal opportunity of racial or language minorities to elect the candidate of their choice"? If not, one could easily argue that there was intent to favor a political party, and that adherence to political boundaries was ignored where it wasn't necessary to do so.

Also, is the difference between Collier and Collier + Lee stark enough that someone could reasonably argue there was intent to protect West? And when you say that it makes the map worse in a lot more places than it improves, do you mean that on the whole it makes districts less compact and/or adhere to existing boundaries less (thus causing the map to violate subsection 2 of the amendment with no overriding factors allowing it to do so)?

Sorry for the ignorant questions, I'm just really curious what the eventual fallout of the inevitable court cases will be. :)

To the best of my ability and comprehension of the state, and within the constraints of not splitting precincts and keeping all districts within 500 of target, this is how I would have drawn the state. I worked from the Senate draft.

()

()

()

1 75-14-5 / 78-13-5 (numbers are anglo-black-hispanic as per DRA, total and VAP), 67.6% McCain
This is as the draft has it, except they could split the precinct at the northeast corner of Holmes for a slightly more reasonable split of the county overall.
2 66-25-5 / 68-24-5, 52.0% McCain
The six county area from Jackson to Hamilton belongs together (they form sort of a North Florida Black Belt, even though only Gadsden is majority Black). Population constraints make it impossible to quite follow up on that notion (unless you want to remove the southernmost precinct of Jefferson and split Wasilla. But that's clearly gerrymandering.) You see why the Senate plan adds Taylor and a small part of Madison instead of Madison and half of Hamilton, of course. Not safe for Southerland.
3 74-14-7 / 76-13-7, 60.0% McCain
Fairly minor changes from what the draft calls the sixth. Yeah, I fixed the numbering scheme for them, seeing as the original north-to-south scheme is still very visible.
4 72-13-8 / 75-12-7, 64.0% McCain
5 36-49-10 / 40-46-9, 67.4% Obama
I tried quite a few arrangements before keeping the 3rd roughly in place (it's painted black here rather than the default yellow, partly because the 18th is close by but also because it's a crawling black snake, of course.) Part of the issue was my inability to keep reasonableish map shapes I tried (e.g. Gainesville, Palatka, Black parts of Jacksonville and Ocala) from going over 50.00% Anglo. Then, there's the size of the Jacksonville Metro to consider - defining that as Duval, Nassau, Clay and the parts of St Johns I included in the fourth here. Oh, and Palm Valley which stayed in the 7th.) Much too large for one seat, much too small for two. The draft has it in four seats, I would have loved to cut it to two but it just wouldn't map out right. So now it's in three. The corridor in eastern Clay through the poshest white suburbs remains super-annoying, of course.
6 82-4-11 / 84-4-9, 52.4% McCain
I initially intended to keep this unchanged from the draft, but eventually I switched out the part of Polk for part of Citrus. Would be safe R.
7 76-10-11 / 79-9-9, 51.5% McCain
Yeah, the bit of Saint Johns in the fourth is extremely Republican. No, I didn't plan on removing it throughout (I toyed with the notion, off and on). That was actually part of my last major revision. Is this still a safe R seat without it? I am not sure.
8 77-10-10 / 81-9-8, 57.6% McCain
A close cousing of what the draft calls the 26th.
9 72-7-15 / 75-6-14, 54.4% McCain
Safe for a Bilirakis. I played with options that wouldn't have had it run this far south, too.
10 74-12-8 / 78-11-7, 56.3% Obama
The Pinellas seat. Fun fact: the House committee report actually contemplates the option of drawing two D sinks in Tampa Bay (though they don't call it that) by crossing the Petersburg-Bradenton bridge.
11 44-21-29 / 48-20-27, 62.7% Obama
See? Removing Bradenton and St Pete minorities doesn't really change the figures here at all as they're still plenty of minorities in Hillsborough to suck up. The white share, that is - five points off the Obama share.
12 64-13-18 / 69-12-15, 53.1% McCain
Polk County sort of gets its own district. Also sort of a descendant of Webster's district in the draft, but without the corridor through central Orlando Whiteyland.
13 79-6-12 / 83-5-10, 52.2% McCain
Slightly more complex than the Manatee+Sarasota-Myakka City district that's also possible; and more Republican as a result (but still 0.9 points less than the draft map's.) I removed North Port which belongs with Port Charlotte anyways, to have this suck up all of the Hillsborough population surplus.
14 66-9-23  / 72-7-19, 57.6% McCain
As advertised above.
15 75-6-16 / 79-6-13, 55.9% McCain
Charlotte, Cape Coral, rural interior, odds and ends.
16 36-12-44 / 40-11-41, 63.4% Obama
Close cousin of the draft 27th. Freed Saint Cloud Anglos, withdrew out of Polk, and drew it deeper into Orange, though. Hispanic plurality VAP (not CVAP, obviously. There are a lot of Puertoricans in Orlando, but a lot of Mexicans too.)
17 68-8-18 / 71-8-16, 50.9% McCain
Descendant of both current and draft 24th, but further south. Racially massaged boundaries, obviously. Not safe in a wave year - neither is the draft's, I think.
18 79-8-9 / 81-8-8, 55.0% McCain
Brevard district, loses Indian River and random bit of Orange, gains random bit of Volusia and very much non-random bit of Osceola in exchange.
19 72-11-14 / 76-10-12, 51.7% McCain
Rooney should like this slightly better than what the Senate drew for him.
20 62-13-21 / 67-11-19, 60.7% Obama
And West is dead.
21 66-13-16 / 70-11-15, 60.0% Obama
22 54-10-31 / 56-9-29, 60.4% Obama
I did not check where any incumbent lives, by the way. You're officially not supposed to. Kept this out of Dade entirely (it's basically Schultz's district.)
23 26-49-21 / 30-45-20, 80.2% Obama
Withdrew some of the furthest-removed precincts. Still consists of two quite separate areas plus the Everglades (and the Belle Glade and Clewiston Blacks!), of course. Draft is also below 50% VAP Black.
24 8-4-86 / 6-4-88, 57.4% McCain
Odd VAP numbers, I know. Anyone know what's up with that? Over a third of the White population is under 18. Cubans considering their children non-Hispanic because they don't speak Spanish? Superpacked Hialeah seat. Still includes a (smaller than the draft's) Dem Hispanic bit of Broward.
25 15-12-70 / 15-11-71, 53.4% Obama
Yeah, these Hispanic suburbs around Homestead and Kendale aren't all that Republican, you know. Didn't Obama carry some of the Cuban districts in 2008 too? Should still be capable of electing its Republican machine to Congress, though getting ever iffier. In an earlier version where this included the Keys, it was 57% Obama.
26 11-54-31 / 13-52-32, 87.4% Obama
The old 17th of course. Apart from the 1st, the district that changed the least - just a couple precincts. No reason to draw it any different.
27 33-4-60 / 34-4-60, 52.9% Obama
Now even more of a coastal rather than a Cuban district as it goes all the way north to the county line (where the draft has it lose Miami Beach.) Ros Lehtinen does well enough with these Whites, though. Would hold this easily enough absent a wave-and-strong-challenger combination.

Though there are roads in between, really Miami (okay, Key West) and Naples (okay, Marco) are dead ends as far as the population distribution goes. It does feel unnatural to bridge it. The 25th takes in a (smaller) part of Collier as is, and IIRC quite a few of those (sizable, but not majoritarian) Hispanics there are Cubans who've come across from the Dade Little Havannas, so there is some logic to it.
I am really no expert on American legal interpretation, and nobody really knows how a court will decide.

Not so fast here. Huge numbers of non-Cuban Hispanics in Dade; South Americans mostly. Low turnout and citizenship rates, obviously. And even the Cubans don't vote monolithically. IIRC we've had proposals to create four Hispanic districts in Dade including one that was a Dem sink.
The point is that not treating Dade as a dead end, you can fidget where all the (non-Black, as these are carved in stone) Southeast Florida districts begin and end. That's how they helped West, and they probably did it on purpose - least disruption, as it were. The two Dem White seats could also stay roughly where they were. Not that that's a valid criterion in going from a no-rules map to a rules-governed map.

Probably not surprising, but, at least for now, Grayson is running in the 27th. (http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/dcdev/forms/C00424713/754176/)

Yes, West will run better than McCain's 44% in the CD, but having moved 4 full points in the Dem direction, this map pretty much throws him under the bus. Amazing really.  The Tea Party should revolt, and scare the map drawers sh*t-less. I quite like West.

()

What are the growth rates of the Cubans vs non Cubans in Dade? This decade it's almost a sure thing that the Cubans will crack the non Cubans again, probably successfully, for 10 years; you can accomplish that fairly easily while still placing 1 (or even 2) districts entirely in Dade.

Eventually though they might quarantine off all the Democratic Hispanics at the south end and use to Cubans to crack the semi liberal whites.

2010 (2000)
Florida
4.224mio (2.683mio) Hispanics of which
1.213mio (833k) Cubans, 848k (482k) Puertoricans, 630k (364k) Mexicans, 433k (203k) Central Americans, 300k (139k) Colombians, 375k (163k) other South Americans, 172k (71k) Dominicans, 253k (429k) did not state, or Spanish
Decline in the dns/unclassifiable write-ins numbers is a US-wide pattern. Probably to do with questionnaire layout.

Broward
438k (272k) Hispanics of which 84k (51k) Cubans, 76k (55k) Puertoricans, 67k (30k) Colombians, 79k (34k) other South Americans etc

Dade
1.624mio (1.292mio) Hispanics of which
856k (651k) Cubans, 213k (128k) Central Americans, 115k (70k) Colombians, 159k (84k) other South Americans, 92k (80k) Puertoricans, 58k (36k) Dominicans, 52k (38k) Mexicans, 80k (203k) did not state
On these figures, the Cuban share of the Hispanic population of Dade actually increased.

Monroe (why is this place in a Minmaj district again? Oh right, geography.)
15k (13k) Hispanics of which 8300 (7100) Cubans

Collier
83k (49k) Hispanics of which 39k (28k) Mexicans (ah.), 17k (7k) Cubans etc

Hendry (why not?)
19k (14k) Hispanics of which 13k (10k) Mexicans, presumably toiling in the sugarcane just like the Haitians a town or two to the east. 2800 (1500) Cubans.

So... all certainties should be muddled up by the numbers. Now we need a good geographical breakdown of Dade, I suppose...

The House released several potential maps. No big surprises. Brown's district is the same, West is still in trouble. Many have a district combining Osceola with half of Polk, I'm not sure if that's a vote sink.

One difference is that unlike the Senate map, all House maps drop the ridiculous spur into Bradenton that was only road-contiguous in one direction at a time.

Cities/towns/CDPs over over 20k inhabitants.

Aventura 36k inhabitants, 13k Hispanics, 8k South Americans
Coral Gables 47k inhabitants, 25k Hispanics, 15k Cubans, 5k South Americans
Coral Terrace 24k inhabitants, 22k Hispanics, 17k Cubans
Country Club 47k inhabitants, 37k Hispanics, 16k Cubans, 10k South Americans
Cutler Bay 40k inhabitants, 22k Hispanics, 10k Cubans
Doral 46k inhabitants, 36k Hispanics, 21k South Americans (of which 9k Venezuelans, the largest community in the place apparently), 6k Cubans
Fountainebleau 60k inhabitants, 55k Hispanics, 28k Cubans, 11k South Americans, 9k Central Americans
Golden Glades 33k inhabitants, 6k Hispanics
Hialeah 225k inhabitants, 213k Hispanics, 165k Cubans, 17k Central Americans (10k Nicaraguans alone), 14k South Americans
Hialeah Gardens 22k inhabitants, 21k Hispanics, 14k Cubans
Homestead 61k inhabitants, 38k Hispanics, 10k Cubans, 9k Mexicans, 8k Central Americans, 5k Puertoricans
Kendale Lakes 56k inhabitants, 49k Hispanics, 29k Cubans, 9k South Americans
Kendall 75k inhabitants, 48k Hispanics, 25k Cubans, 12k South Americans
Kendall West 36k inhabitants, 32k Hispanics, 16k Cubans, 8k South Americans
Leisure City 23k inhabitants, 17k Hispanics, 6k Cubans, 5k Mexicans
Miami 399k inhabitants, 279k Hispanics, 137k Cubans, 63k Central Americans (29k Nicaraguans, 23k Hondurans), 35k South Americans
Miami Beach 88k inhabitants, 47k Hispanics, 18k Cubans, 15k South Americans (they're intending to drop this place into a non-VRA seat while retaining Monroe and expanding in Collier? Hmmm... Retrogression! Retrogression! :) )
Miami Gardens 107k inhabitants, 24k Hispanics, 10k Cubans. Primarily a Black town, of course.
Miami Lakes 29k inhabitants, 24k Hispanics, 17k Cubans
North Miami 59k inhabitants, 16k Hispanics, 4k Cubans still the largest group
North Miami Beach 42k inhabitants, 15k Hispanics, 5k South Americans, 3k Cubans lead when S.Am. broken up
Palmetto Bay 23k inhabitants, 9k Hispanics, 4k Cubans
Princeton 22k inhabitants, 13k Hispanics, 5k Cubans
Richmond West 32k inhabitants, 25k Hispanics, 13k Cubans
Sunny Isles Beach 21k inhabitants, 9k Hispanics, 5k South Americans. More Colombians than Cubans.
Tamiami 55k inhabitants, 51k Hispanics, 36k Cubans, 6k South Americans, 3500 Nicaraguans
The Crossings 23k inhabitants, 16k Hispanics, 7k Cubans, 5k South Americans
The Hammocks 51k inhabitants, 39k Hispanics, 14k South Americans, 14k Cubans
University Park 27k inhabitants, 23k Hispanics, 17k Cubans
Westchester 30k inhabitants, 27k Hispanics, 21k Cubans
West Little River 35k inhabitants, 18k Hispanics, 8k Cubans, 5k Central Americans

I intend to sort these geographically and add McCain-Obama figures. But not today.
 

Link?

That spur makes the difference between a safe Buchanan and a waveweary Buchanan.

I don't think this is really geographically possible. Nearly all of the non-Hispanic whites in Miami County live either (a) on the barrier islands or the nearby mainland, or (b) south of the city.

The northern whites are inaccessible except through the black areas (obviously not possible) or through downtown Miami. They would have to all be in one district because it's just too narrow to partition them otherwise. Drawing a district like that, I end up with 54% Obama--might be possible to lower that to 51-2% if you're more precise, but it can't go much lower, which is far from safe.

The southern whites are surrounded by and interspersed with non-Cubans, so they would go naturally in a south-Dade-and-Monroe Hispanic Democratic district (which is around 57-58% Obama and around 60% Hispanic VAP).

That's effectively what I drew for Ros Lehtinen just above. Of course, I also gave her Monroe County.
With the result that the Southern district picked up some of the Cuban Republican territory. That was okay with me because I needed one of the three Hispanic districts to extend into Broward, and the northwesterly one at least bordered Hispanic territory (of a different character... but it seems the Cubans are interspersed with non-Cubans anywhere north of Hialeah anyways.)

The Hispanic areas north of Hialeah (but still in Dade County) are actually very Democratic, like 65% Obama. I guess the Cubans don't live up there?

Miami Lakes would be the biggest incorporated town in those parts, and it's majority Cuban.

Here's my fair map of Dade and Broward Counties. There's no reason for Cubans to be dominating all three Hispanic districts, certainly; Hispanics should be considered as a group, and this map is much more geographically reasonable.

Blue: 57.7-42.3 Obama; 26.8W, 12.1B, 57.6H (VAP) (includes Monroe County)
Green: 54.8-45.2 Obama; 25.4W, 5.9B, 66.1H
Purple: 84.9-15.1 Obama; 10.8W, 50.6B, 34.7H
Red: 37.8-62.8 McCain; 6.4W, 1.5B, 90.6H
Gold: 73.3-26.7 Obama; 43.6W, 35.0B, 17.3H (plurality black on overall population, would definitely elect a black-preferred Congressman, and quite compact)
Teal: 61.7-38.3 Obama; 53.5W, 10.9B, 29.5H (unfortunately, most of the remaining blacks and Hispanics are in the SW corner, inaccessible for the gold district)

()

Can't you read numbers? Cubans are a majority of the Hispanic population in the county.

Yeah, I misread that. I noticed and fixed it before you posted.

3 McCain districts, 2 of which sit entirely in Dade. Yellow, Blue, Brown. The Keys are removed and placed in the Naples district.

() (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/337/3dade.png/)


10 years from now someone might place the Keys, Homestead, Cutler Bay, etc in a new Democratic district, but certainly not today.  Depends on how whites in Broward County vote over the next 10 years.

The black district can of course assist in grabbing some non Cuban Hispanics.

could Grayson be the next Bob Filner - a very liberal transplanted jewish dem running in a heavily minority sunbelt district.

Krazen, your map violates the FRA (or whatever it's called). There's an unnecessary and illegal county split between Dade and Broward; you only need one to simultaneously create three Hispanic districts and one black district, as my map showed (and you need a split both for population equality and to create the black district--actually I think you might be able to create a majority black district all in Dade, but it has to reach down U.S. 1 all the way to Homestead in a long tail and looks ridiculous).

If you say so. No court has found such, so its merely an opinion that isn't taken seriously.

The law is quite explicit in saying that county splits are to be minimized (but subordinated to racial considerations), so you should take it seriously. I would not be shocked if the politicized Florida judiciary found otherwise, of course...

"[D]istricts shall, where feasible, utilize existing political and geographical boundaries." Clearly, not bridging the Dade-Broward line more than once is feasible, and it does not violate any of the other provisions.

Does so inevitably, actually. (Well, some Hispanic Democrats. It's clearly not the same thing.)

I do not see that a double county split between Dade and Broward is illegal per se, but it would need to be justified to be defendable in court. Krazen's parts of Broward are not really connected - he's cutting out a Hispanic area that doesn't vote the way he wants and places it in a White district, after all - and I'm not sure of the racial breakdown of the areas he includes instead. If they're White, it's should be very tough to defend.

Weston is about 31% Hispanic and 60% or so white. Mid 50s Obama territory. 'Political' and 'Geographical' boundaries obviously includes town boundaries as well as county boundaries and no heirarchy is placed among them. It is of course nice to assume one when it benefits your party, but other courts (such as the New Jersey Supreme Court) have ignored much stronger language that is less subject to interpretation.

I might add of course that the 2 districts I placed entirely in Dade is 1 more than the legislatures maps, or your own. The point of view of both parties in the legislature is reasonably clear in this regard.

In any event, taking out the Keys and placing in Miami Beach and Weston doesn't really make much sense this decade anyway, unless you really want to save Allen West that badly.

I didn't dig deep enough to see if any maps were released publicly but there appears to be some more movement here.

http://www.rollcall.com/news/Redistricting-Maps-Starting-to-Move-in-Florida-211483-1.html

There seems to be a very real battle between the House and Senate on whether the bill should be faithfully executed or the GOP should just take its chances in court, in the Tampa Bay area. You'd almost think the House was under split partisan control.

This (http://www.flsenate.gov/PublishedContent/Session/Redistricting/Plans/S000C9006/S000C9006_map_fl.pdf) is what the Senate EDIT: the Senate Committee passed. Race stats. (http://www.flsenate.gov/PublishedContent/Session/Redistricting/Plans/S000C9006/S000C9006_pop_sum.pdf) (I also found a document with loads of other statistics by district, but nothing political in there. Tenure, age groups, and whatnot.)

The House Committee, meanwhile, has narrowed the choice down to this (http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://censusvalidator.blob.core.windows.net/mydistrictbuilderdata/4GoogleMaps/H000C9041.kmz), this (http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://censusvalidator.blob.core.windows.net/mydistrictbuilderdata/4GoogleMaps/H000C9043.kmz), or this (http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://censusvalidator.blob.core.windows.net/mydistrictbuilderdata/4GoogleMaps/H000C9043.kmz). http://censusvalidator.blob.core.windows.net/mydistrictbuilderdata/Legislative%20Plans/H000C9041.pdf (http://censusvalidator.blob.core.windows.net/mydistrictbuilderdata/Legislative%20Plans/H000C9041.pdf)Highly technical report, amend 1 to 3 or 5 at end of address for other two plans.

The FL Senate passed a pretty aggressive map today.  FL-22 and the new FL-27 are conceded.  None of the other 19 R seats gets worse than 51.5% Obama, but FL-02 could be a toss up with a Blue Dog.

It is quite a gamble because a special master COI map of Florida would be the best thing to happen for Democrats this cycle.  The state supreme court is 4D-3R and presumably has final authority over whether the map is legal.

Of course this map favors the GOP but it's honestly a notable improvement over the current one. FL-22 is now clearly a D leaning district. FL-10 will be in play at some point in the near future when Young retires. I agree about FL-2 being a good blue dog district at 47% Obama. FL-25 is a Democratic trending area of Dade county that easily could become a tossup or D leaning by the middle of the decade(younger Cubans are not nearly as republican). FL-16 would take the right year for a Dem to win b/c Rooney is popular but it's in play during a wave. FL-8,24 went for McCain by less than 1 point and have several high growth heavily hispanic areas (Polk County in 8, Seminole in 24). By 2018 this map may not be that awful for Dems but they should still challenge it anyway. A court would likely give them an additional seat out of Orange County and make FL-22 safe.

Same map as the Senate committee map linked above, or do I need to go search for it?

Same I believe. 7 of the 12 Florida Democrats voted in favor of it. It will likely be difficult to claim that such a map is drawn for a partisan purpose.

They seem to have created a Senate district within Palm Beach that should be solid for a Republican. Of course, Senate districts are about 2/3 the size of the Congressional.




Sen. Oscar Braynon, D-Miami Gardens, questioned why the GOP had carved out District 29 stretching from just east of Fort Lauderdale north to take in most of coastal Palm Beach County when it could have been drawn entirely in Palm Beach.

Surrounded by districts that tilt Democratic, the new-look District 29 is similar to Republican Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff's current District 25.

The new district is a little more of a straight line in Palm Beach, but would still likely be a swing seat, with 37 percent Republican voters and 35 percent Democrat.

Interesting note #2. I was wondering why they changed FL-13 from its original configuration (Manatee and Sarasota Counties) to its new configuration (the coastal areas of Manatee, Sarasota, and Charlotte Counties).

Well, it looks like they cut the house district of Dem Challenger Keith Fitzgerald in 2.

It seems like every Republican map this cycle has had at least one Democratic vote for it, even serious gerrymanders like PA and OH. 

Out of curiosity, I wonder if any Republicans voted for the Democratic maps in IL or MD?  I believe the MA Dem map got Republican votes...

The vote in IL was on party lines.

The MA map was essentially drawn at random.  They didn't even bother to gerrymander it except to create a majority-minority district in Boston.

After watching the PA and VA GOP, it's amazing to me how badly Dems played the game in CO.  They needed just a single GOP vote in one chamber of the legislature to pass whatever map they wanted.  Just agree to turn some GOP legislator's 57% Obama district into a 57% McCain district on condition that he/she votes for everything else in your maps!

The Dem map in MA was surprisingly bipartisan -- or at least as bipartisan as you could expect from the Dem legislature. If I was a GOP Rep., I'd have voted for it too.

Great news for the Dems, West is running in Rooney's district (old 16, new 18). District went 51-48 Obama in 2008 and looks to be R+1ish.  Considering his history of inflammatory remarks, I'd give the Dems even money of winning it right now. Add to the fact they should win a now open FL-22, it could be a 2 seat Dem gain in south FL rather than just West.

We never discussed the eventual compromise map.

I can't find any of the cool demographic reports for it that we had for earlier drafts. Even the googlemaps link they offer is broken. All I got is a lousy pdf (http://censusvalidator.blob.core.windows.net/mydistrictbuilderdata/Legislative%20Plans/H000C9047_8x11.pdf).
Senate caved on Buchanan, House on Young. (Which means they drew something similar to what the NAACP wanted in the Tampa Bay, though with somewhat more of St Pete in the Tampa district.)
They also appear to have decided at the last minute to restore the north-south numbering scheme broken in 2000. I approve of that.

The new Dem seat in Orlando (now the 9th) gave Obama 60%... but actually went for Bush by a whisper in 2004. Swings around Orlando were that huge (and not only 2004 to 8 - the area swung pretty heavily Dem over the 90s, then back a bit in '04, then back the other way to new extremes in '08.) Not safe for Grayson against an electable Republican.

Wait. Have they or haven't they reached a compromise? I am currently confused.

It looks as if that map linked to has so far only been passed by the House redistricting committee (and is set to be passed by the House tomorrow), but is nonetheless assumed to be the final map by commentators. Whether rightly or wrongly I've no idea.

I've also found all the statistics I could want except for voting results (which I suppose they aren't supposed to officially take into account and are not releasing for that reason).

Some more on the merry-go-round: Mica and Adams both live in the leanish-R Seminole district; Mica will run in the safer Volusia district instead. Nugent and... I forget who... both live in the safe 11th, one of them will have to run in the even safer 3rd instead. I wonder what Bilirakis thinks of that 15th the House drew him - safe R and all, but quite a new district when earlier plans incl. the Senate map had his old district more or less in one piece.

Corrine Brown's seat is just ever so barely (50.1%) majority Black alone or in combination VAP. Doesn't say in the report, but can be surmised to be about ~48.0 or ~48.2 non-Hispanic Black Alone (ie DRA figure). Of course, that's Blacker than before, and seems to be majority non-Hispanic Black Alone in total population.
Shouldn't legally matter as it's not compact anyways... and as I see no striking down as no more compact version can be drawn. But still a nice touch.

Oh lol, the Senate version actually stops at 49.96%. Somehow I think both versions do it on purpose, based on what they think is legally safer.

Its incredible how much you and others just hate that there is an outspoken, conservative black man in the House.  Black Democrats say inflammatory stuff all the time, yet you don't try to get them out of office.  It's pathetic

Florida always does those crappy PDFs. It's the same design they used 10 years ago!

There are some decent insets for the Senate plan... but although most districts* are quite similar, only the 1st, 2nd, and 8th (15th in the Senate scheme) are identical.

*everything but the east-central part (sans the Pinellas-Tampa pair) of the state, and Monroe County's placement between the two southern Cuban seats.

Give me a break. The guy hires a woman as his chief of staff (who later declined it) who said at a rally "If ballots don't work, bullets will." He compares the Dems to the nazis using language such as Goebbels propaganda machine and keeps mentioning how 2012 will be a bloodbath. Whether the guy is mentally competent is a bigger question than whether he wins election in his new district.

I don't think there's a compromise yet. Two days ago, the House put this Senate-passed map (http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Redistricting/Plan/s004c9014/) on their special order calendar at the same time they moved up this House map (http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Redistricting/Plan/H000C9047/) on their general calendar for the second reading. We should know by tomorrow what they plan to do with the Senate map, I suppose.

Does anyone have what district numbers the old districts match up to?

Here's the Obama Mccain figures for both maps.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0At9k6QrlThx6dEZ1Q1FZWFlXWjA4d1BlSmNHdklSdkE&hl=en_US#gid=0

The House map seems to be the one that people are going on. Senate map adheres to the old numbering while the House map renumbers.

On the House map:

FL-6 - Mica, based around Daytona Beach
FL-7 - Adams, based in Seminole County
FL-13 - Young, based in Pinellas
FL-16 - Rooney, new district based around Charlotte Harbor
FL-18 - West, Rooney's old district in St. Lucie
FL-22 - ?, the Republican areas of Palm Beach/Broward
FL-25, 36, 27 - Cuban districts
FL-9 - ?, new district based on Kissimmee/Orlando

Everyone knows where the Republicans are anyway. Nugent and Stearns are combined.

:(

Of course it's a heavily Hispanic seat so it's probably not likely any current Republican could replicate Bush's numbers...

Yeah, it looks like the district for Bilirakis is actually the 12th, not the 15th as I claimed above.

If everybody were to run in the district that got the largest part of his old district - even if it's only 40odd% and/or they don't live there - that leaves every Dem in a safe seat, every Rep bar West in at least an even seat, the D 9th and the R 17th open. With Wayne Rooney and Fred West's announcements to both run in the district that got the second largest share of their old one instead even though they live nowhere near them, that leaves the D 9th and 22nd open instead. Easy D+2. Provided everybody holds and Dems actually do take the new seats, of course, but there's a major natural (yeah right) break at this point - no district more than 51 but less than 57 percent Obama. (How did the House map make Rivera safer than the Senate map? That's a trick I missed looking at it. Also, looks like the Senate map still endangered Buchanan, so kept the Bradenton carveout for nothing? Hilarious.)

In the legally mandated Florida Supreme Court review of the finalized map, what sort of precedent/authority do they have? If they don't approve the legislature's map, can they draw it themselves, or send it back to the legislature with a list of needed changes, or what?

I don't see how that Bradenton could be considered legal. Good lawsuit basis there.

General rule of thumb is that the legislature has the first right to fix legislation.

Florida Constitution, See Article III, Section 16 (http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?Mode=Constitution&Submenu=3&Tab=statutes&CFID=244171538&CFTOKEN=41246988)

This part of the apportionment procedure was already in place.  You will notice that it specifies that reapportionment begin in the XXX2 year.   After the legislature passes a plan, the AG has to present if to the Supreme Court (in effect it works somewhat like Section 5 preclearance), if the court finds that it doesn't comply with the constitution, it gets kicked back down to the legislature for a 2nd try in which "the legislature shall adopt a joint resolution of apportionment conforming to the judgment of the supreme court".  If the supreme court doesn't like the 2nd plan they can draw their own.

The Florida Supreme Court is still part of Florida, so this final plan will still have to be precleared by the USDOJ (some counties in Florida are subject to Section 5 preclearance)

This section was only added in 1998, and while it provides some incentives to force reapportionment, it doesn't have any much in the way of standards.  It would be subject to equal protection and VRA standards, but it would require a pretty aggressive court to complain about too much deviation from the population equality, and then the legislature could just do a more extreme gerrymander.

The proponents of the redistricting amendments wanted to create an independent redistricting commission, but found that would violate a ban on constitutional amendments concerning two different subject matters (ie both reapportionment standards; and reapportionment procedures).

So what they ended up with is a set of standards that would like those that would be placed on a redistricting commission.   If it were a redistricting commission, you would try to salt the commission with persons who are susceptible to your version of fairness, and then get the staff lawyers to emphasize certain points, and keep sending in witnesses to testify about their "community" interests.

Since in Florida the legislature will be doing the reapportionment, they added "intent" standards.  When the plan goes before the Supreme Court, the lawyers for the challengers will argue for a "wisp of a possibility of an inference of intent" standard, while the state will argue for a "beyond a reasonable doubt standard".  The Supreme Court will get to determine what the People meant when they passed the measure.   The People probably thought they were getting rid of districts like FL-3 and the ridiculous districts on the Gold Coast.  But the Democrats will argue that is obviously not the case, since the People also included the race-based criteria.

Last summer, the legislature was holding hearings on redistricting throughout Florida.  Remember it was unconstitutional for the legislature to even consider actual legislation.   "Citizens" would show up and demand that the legislature "show us your plans".  Unless the lady from the ACLU was desperate and hoping one of the legislators would bring her up to his hotel room to "see my redistricting plans", they were basically building their case for proving what the "intent" of the legislature was.

Bradenton isn't in the House map.... you mean St Petersburg?

The issue to use is clearly the Cuban districts; retrogressing out of Miami Beach to take more White Republicans in Collier is a risky move by Republicans. You'd also hope to clean up west central Florida... though I doubt a map that makes everybody happy (and I don't mean politicians looking for a safe job) is actually feasible there.

Incidentally that district is the 54% McCain one...ie Ironclad, compared to the other 2. VAPs on the 3 cuban districts are 71, 69, 75, respectively.

Of course, of course - it's the Diaz Balart district (though Mario continues to live in his former district FL25/6 and, hilariously, Rivera's home was drawn into this district. No, they will not switch.) But you need to regard the three district area, really. Move it further east, you'll always continue to have one ironclad district for a Diaz Balart but the GOP's chances at the other two weaken (not necessarily to the point where they'll have to actually concede one.)

I'd have to look at the population totals. The current cuban districts already extend into Collier County....but keep in mind those area around the everglades are basically empty. I'm not sure how much more population from Collier was added to the tri district area, but I don't believe its much.

If its not much, the option probably remains to skim random precincts from the black district or wasserman schultz and leave the other 2 cubans alone.

The three House Plan Cuban districts taken together take in virtually the entire old 25th (a sliver in Collier actually goes to the new Lee/Collier district), 91% of the old 21st (remainder split between Deutch and Wilson), just 80% of the old 18th (ditto, Deutch getting more though), as well as 8% of the old 14th, 3% of the old 16th (I think this must also be on the Collier/Hendry side of things?) and minuscule parts of the old 17th and 23rd. Like, 20 people in the Everglades in the latter case.
23rd and 24th move up to over 37% and 32% Hispanic VAP respectively as a result of shifting southwards.
I'm just looking at my handwritten notes here; the report I took these from would have the racial breakdown of the territories transferred.
Obviously, the usual process if this were a commission would be to skim some non-Hispanic areas off the edges of the Cuban seats (as they're oversized, summed), and the Collier part that both doesn't belong COIwise and isn't even majority Hispanic ought to be your first place to look. The 17th (now 24th) needing some additional population complicates it a little, and I don't think a court'll object to dropping a few Dem Hispanics into it. But only a little.

Of course, not doing that, and taking that legal risk (and a risk is all it is, I'm not saying it's certain the map'll end up court-drawn or anything), not only helped Ros Rivera and Ros Lehtinen a little, by pushing all the Gold Coast districts south it also helped the Rooney-West switcheroo. Rooney has little incentive to switch districts if you don't do that.

52% of Collier's population is in Mario's district under the House plan (50% under the Senate plan).

DKE has a nice breakdown of the new districts (they also did one for California):

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/10/1063407/-Daily-Kos-Elections-Florida-cheat-sheet

I don't understand why Mica is running in FL-07, when FL-06 is mostly from his old district and it's more Republican.

Also, Crist won three of the districts in 2010, FL-13 (Bill Young), FL-21 (Ted Deutch), and FL-23 (Debbie Wasserman Schultz). Edit: four, actually, he won FL-14 (Kathy Castor) by a hair.

It is where he's actually from, of course. But yeah, his decision came as quite a surprise to everybody, apparently.

Also, the new 7th is basically a smaller version of Mica's 90s district; almost all of it was in it.

Comparing Obama/McCain results for the old and new districts:

Old: 10 Obama - 15 McCain

New: 10 Obama - 17 McCain

All six Dem-held CDs (Brown, Castor, Wilson, Deutch, DWS, Hastings) all heavily Obama before and after.

Bill Young's CD stays at 51-47 Obama.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's CD goes from 51-49 Obama to 51-49 McCain.

Daniel Webster's CD (Alan Grayson's old CD) is currently 53-47 Obama, and will be split into a (likely) Grayson CD at 60-39 Obama and a Webster CD at 52-47 McCain.

Allen West's old CD is 52-48 Obama and Tom Rooney's is 52-47 McCain. West will be running in Rooney's old CD at 51-48 Obama. The successor to Allen West's old CD is 57-43 Obama.

BTW, can someone explain the headings in the Fla. (and Calif.) expanded spreadsheet?

Revised Florida Senate map upheld.

http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2012/04/gaetz-tells-senate-elections-will-be-held-on-time.html


The GOP of course will continue to retain large majorities in the chamber.

And in other news, water is still wet.

Florida Congressional map precleared.

http://atr.rollcall.com/justice-department-pre-clears-florida-congressional-map/


And supported by a judge.

http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/content/judge-rejects-dems-attempt-put-congressional-map-hold-during-trial


He said that absent a determination that the map is unconstitutional "I do not have the authority to replace it with another map while the case is pending." Absent that, he said the result would be that the 2002 map would remain in effect -- a map, he said "was admittedly drawn to favor the Republican Party and incumbents."



That would be very funny indeed if the judge used the 2002 map with 2 at large districts.

I think "supported by a judge" is a fairly strong overstatement since he clearly believes the map is in violation of the new redistricting requirements.  I think the Dems only lost this one on a technicality.  Although it is certainly not great for the Dems this year, we'll have to wait and see how things go with the actual arguments over the map's constitutionality.

It is not clear at all from his opinion that he believes the map is in violation of the new redistricting requirements.

http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/story/debbie-wasserman-schultz-nan-rich-rod-smith-tried-gerrymander-blamed-gop-doing-same



Florida Democrats were scheming to concoct some vicious gerrymanders.

Reminds me of the horrendous Dem counterproposal to the Republican gerrymander of Pa.

http://www.politicspa.com/dems-release-their-own-congressional-map/30151/

I'll see if I can at least get the 25th to 60% without the Monroe change. Also, it's not possible to get the 3rd to 40% with all of Alachua, Palatka, a small piece or Clay and the Duval piece (still in the 36-37% neighborhood). It can't even be done by splitting Alachua, just taking 120K of the highest percentage AA precincts. Furthermore adding more Duval than in already included in the version from this afternoon drops Democratic Performance. The best I can do with the onstruction
depicted in the attached is 52.2% Dem Performance and 38.4% Total Black/37.8% non-Hispanic Black %.


No wonder Corrine Brown was upset.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/national/emails-show-group-sought-to-protect-wasserman-schultz-seat-in-redistricting/2118646

A liberal group involved in a lawsuit to make Florida's congressional districts less partisan engaged in its own partisan efforts by drawing Democratic-heavy Hispanic seats or trying to "scoop" Jewish voters into a district for U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic National Committee chair, emails show.

The Fair Districts map-maker, Wieneke, noted in the same email that the constitution bans favoring or disfavoring incumbents or parties.

"OK, generally we want a map that looks like it is doing this, but Democrats currently have 6 of 25 seats and all 6 of those seats are minority majority or minority coalition seats," he wrote Oct. 16, 2011. "Underlying goal is to increase the number of safe Democratic seats and the number of competitive seats."

'Those damn leftists. Oh well, at least conservatives never try to maximize their seats or pack voters.

Who said that?

()

Florida legislators have admitted (http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/legislators-admit-to-destroying-redistricting-documents/2157630) to destroying documents related to the redistricting lawsuit.


Also, the Democrats proposal for a fair map have been disclosed. Here are the two proposals they have, recreated in DRA.

()

Map A has FL-05 drop Orlando, but pick up parts of Tallahassee, while still keeping Gainesville and Ocala.

()

Map B is the same, except FL-05 drops Gainesville and Ocala.


Overall major changes:


-Both maps have FL-02 become unwinnable for Democrats. In 2008, Obama got less than 40% in both versions of it.
-FL-03 gets slightly less Republican in the first map, while being a 49.2% Obama '08 district in the second map, compared to 40% under current lines. Against a nut like Ted Yoho, Democrats would have a decent chance of picking this up.
-FL-10 gets +13 points more Democratic, to the point it is a 61.2% Obama '08 district. Webster would be toast. It goes from 75% white to 54% white, 27% black, and 15% hispanic.
-FL-13 picks up all of St. Petersburg, getting +4.5 points more D-friendly as a result. Any chance of Republicans beating Alex Sink here is all but lost.
-FL-16 gets a few points more Democrat. Obama got 49.8% here in 2008.
-FL-18 gets slightly more liberal, but by less than 1 point.
-FL-20 goes from plurality-black to majority-black.
-FL-26 gets 5 points more liberal, making it a much safer seat for Joe Garcia.


In short, it would trade one gerrymander for another. I'd rather FL-05 become an entirely Jacksonville-based district, than snake to Orlando or Tallahassee, and it's just an ugly map overall.

Looks like I'd be in FL-18. Murphy would be leagues above Frankel, though I would much prefer Carl Domino, Adam Hasner, or Ellen Andel.

Does the new FL-18 only cover the coast, or does it extend a bit beyond the intercoastal waterway? Because I live off a side canal and don't want to look across the river at FL-18 while I am stuck here with Lois Frankel as my Rep :P.

Would this be a better map? Both the R and D maps from the legislature assumed section 5 which is no longer in effect for FL. I preserved 3 HVAP majority CDs, 1 BVAP majority CD and a majority minority CD (23). I wasn't wild about sticking Monroe with the Gulf Coast, but there is regular ferry service between Key West and Fort Myers and it allows better use of county lines without a CD that crosses the unpopulated middle. It also matches up with the urban county clusters. I've included detail of central and south FL to show how municipal boundaries are also preserved.

()

()

()

FL-18 doesn't extend into the coast at all, that yellow part on the coast is just a water district that can't be split in DRA. You'd probably still be in FL-22.

I personally think that's a very reasonable map. One of my biggest problems has been how Republicans have been carving up St. Petersburg. There's no reason at all why it shouldn't be in one district. You have a St. Petersburg-centred district, a Tampa-centred district, and a suburban Hillsborough district. Personally, I'd rather see an entirely Duval County-based CD-04. And other than the rather unsightly CD-17, it's a very nice map.

Well, CD-17 is unsightly more because it follows county boundaries than any attempt at gerrymandering.

Florida has a comparable black population to Georgia, which of course has 4 black districts.  Or Texas, which also has 4 black districts. Or New York, which also has 4 black districts. It would be quite curious to see the legislature thus create a Florida map with only 2 black districts.

How concentrated a minority population is also has an impact on how easy it is to draw minority-majority districts.

Exactly. Without Section 5 the question of compactness for a VRA district looms large. When a minority only exists in a number of disconnected urban centers does Section 2 mandate the creation of a district where that minority can elect a representative of choice? If so, how much of a stretch is permitted to have a mandated minority district? If the Louisiana suit moves forward it may well provide an answer.

Whether is it mandated is separate from whether it is justified as a permissible choice made by a legislature. This is especially so when Florida has fewer districts of this type than other states.


A proposed New York State map drew a district connecting Harlem to areas in Westchester County in order to preserve the 4th black district. Harlem and Westchester County might be geographically closer than Jacksonville and Orlando but are certainly quite distinct.

A legislature can endeavor to do that and as long as they show that race was a factor but not the predominant factor for the district then it should be permissible. If the district is strangely shaped connecting disparate areas and race is the predominant factor then it would likely be thrown out like the NC-12 districts of the 1990s.

God, yes. As someone living in the FL-14 part of Pinellas, we're a lot closer in every regard to the rest of St. Pete than to Tampa or whatever Castor's representing. Only reason we're not in the same district is to help Bill Young.

The Florida Constitution reiterates the federal VRA (rather than weaseling out and simply saying that federal law must be adhered to).  To diminish the ability to elect candidates of choice is the equivalent of the Section V standard.  Not diminishing the ability to elect presumably is a viable standard regardless whether maps must be precleared by the federal government or not.

I had not considered that phrase in the FL constitution as a section 5 copy, but I agree that it appears so. That raises the question of whether a state can mandate no retrogression as a standard without the requirements of section 5. A legislature can choose to implement a plan that has no retrogression as long as race is not the predominant factor. But does the mandate become a race-based standard that goes beyond what section 2 permits?

The 11th circuit in 2002 validated the apportionment plan passed by that legislature. In doing so, they noted that the 3rd district (now the 5th) was reasonably compact, and was intentionally drawn with the reasonable purpose of giving the black population 1 district in North Florida. That case never reached the Supreme Court. The membership of the Supreme Court has mostly cycled over since the 1990s in any case.

Some news on this front. (http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2014-05-18/news/os-redistricting-trial-20140518_1_legislative-and-congressional-maps-women-voters-central-florida)