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Earlier this year, Fair District Florida, an anti-gerrymandering/redistricting reform advocacy group, collected enough signatures to place Amendments 5 and 6 on the ballot in Florida this November. If approved by a vote of 60% or greater, the amendments to the State Constitution would change the way state legislative (Florida Legislative District Boundaries, Amendment 5) and congressional (Florida Congressional District Boundaries, Amendments 6) districts are drawn. Among other things, the amendments would require districts be contiguous, compact and when possible use existing city/country boundaries. The Republican controlled legislature tried to stop this effort by putting their own legislative sponsored amendment dealing with redistricting, Florida Redistricting Amendment 7 , on the ballot. Yesterday, the Florida Supreme Court voted to remove Amendment 7 from the ballot, declaring the ballot summary confusing and lacking critical information. The court also rejected an attempt to have Amendments 5 and 6 removed from the ballot. From the Palm Beach Post:
The court also tossed the lawmakers’ redistricting proposal, Amendment 7, finding that it lacked crucial information telling voters that, if passed, lawmakers would no longer be required to craft districts that are contiguous.
In a related ruling Tuesday, the court decided that two citizens’ initiatives on redistricting will remain on the ballot. Known as the “Fair Districts” amendments, Amendments 5 and 6, are aimed at preventing lawmakers from gerrymandering, or drawing districts that favor incumbents or political parties.
Amendment 7 was seen by many as a clear attempt by the legislature to either confuse the voters about Amendments 5 and 6, so they would fail to get enough voters, and/or a way to prevent the reforms from going into effect, as a so called poison bill to stop redistricting reform efforts.
These rulings by the court are not only a victory for anti-gerrymandering advocates, but also for the right of citizen lawmakers to use the ballot initiative process to push for real political reform. Throughout American history, the ballot initiative process has been one of the key ways good government advocates have pushed for structural change to our political system. Changing a broken system is hard and the process would be even harder if those that are in power because of the status quo were allowed to use that power to subvert citizens’ attempts at reform using direct democracy.
12 Comments
Good for the Florida courts
Torn.
If you want to see the destructiveness of ballot measures, regardless of whether you support or oppose a particular prop, come to California and get a load of some real gridlock.
Thanks, Jon.
Yeay !
thanks Jon
Democracy has always been the people’s rope. The rope by which they can pull themselves to greatness or hang themselves, regardless at least it is their rope to do with what they will.
No doubt. And we chose very, very poorly here.
Hmm, in paragraph 2, I think that euphemism is “poison pill”. As a lifelong resident of the first state to enact the initiative, Oregon, I’ve both seen the good, bad and ugly of initiative campaigns and been involved w/several. Glad the progressives in FL are using it to strengthen their redistricting laws. What Tom Delay did in Texas is the worst recent example of gerrymandering (thx for the old cartoon, is it Nast?). Since FL is a newly shifting state demographically (to the Ds), if this passes, it’ll assure that the Rs still left in the legislature won’t pull a Delay on their way outta there.
This was some welcome news here in FL. The Supreme Court also threw Amendment 9 off of our ballot – which was the Orwellian-named “Health Care Freedom Amendment.”
Worth noting that gerrymandering is REALLY bad in Florida. We’re a relatively 50/50 state between Ds and Rs, with a small R lean, imo. However, our legislature is close to two-thirds Republican in both houses of the legislature. There’s no real way to hold them accountable because its nearly impossible to defeat them in their pre-configured districts. Legislative elections are more coronations than elections.
Really crossing my fingers Amendments 5 and 6 pass.
This is good news. Gerrymandering is just wrong.
One of the reasons the Rethugs in the legislature put Amendment 7 on the ballot is they themselves believe 5 and 6 will pass. Amendment 4, Home Town Democracy, has scared the living hell out of developers and their cronies. The basic premise of Amend 4 is that citizens have a say in how their community development plans are drawn up and implemented The monied developers and their cronies fought Amendment 4 from day 1. They got the legislature to pass a law that folks who had signed the petition could have their names removed in an effort to keep the initiative from getting on the ballot. The FL Supreme Court nixed that law too. Something like 4 years has passed since the petitions first started being circulated. Opponents lost court battle after court battle. Amendments 4, 5 and 6 had way more than enough signatures to make it onto the ballot.
Go Amendments 4, 5 and 6, Go!!
“Among other things, the amendments would require districts be contiguous, compact and when possible use existing city/country boundaries.”
Use existing country boundaries? What? Mexicans will be denied the vote in our elections? ;-)
Good common sense judgment. Do we still vote on Diebold machines here? Or will the decision have no impact in the real world of Florida ballots.
With all the hand wringing over the probable loss of the house to the republicans, we been missing the fact that this being a census year, the potentially most important and far reaching electoral battles will be the state legislatures. They will be drawing the 2012 congresional district boundaries.
A ballot initiative like Florida’s Prop 6 that limits the legislature’s ability to carve out safe districts or overload the opposition into just a few is simply our best chance of returning any sort of power to the voters. There is no short term measure that will make Congress more accountable to the voters than making it easier to defeat them.
Would the behavior of the House as a whole change if the number of seats in play increased from 15% to 40 or 40%? I think it surely would.