US House Redistricting: Florida

[DrScholl]

My best try at a fair map

[DrScholl]

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.

[DrScholl]

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.

[DrScholl]

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.
[/quote]

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.

[DrScholl]

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.

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.

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.

[DrScholl]

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.




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.

[DrScholl]

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.

[DrScholl]

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....

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.

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.

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.

[DrScholl]

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.