US House Redistricting: Florida

[Padfoot]

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

[Padfoot]

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

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.

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.

[Padfoot]

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.

[Padfoot]

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.

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.

[Padfoot]

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

[Padfoot]

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.