Florida state senator, Andy Gardiner, might want to bone up on his constitutional law.
The Republican Leader from Orlando was quoted in the Miami Herald that, “If a particular district is at a percentage, I think it’s very important, across the minority district, that it stays within that percentage.”
Of course, Gardiner’s redistricting rationale, which is predicated on “packing” racial and ethnic minorities into so-called “majority-minority” districts, is exactly what a super-majority of Florida citizens, who approved Amendments 5 & 6 in 2010, want to eliminate.
Lowering the percentage of racial and ethnic minorities in legislative districts (both state and federal) is perfectly legal and does not necessarily violate Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act–even the 2006 Voting Rights Act Reauthorization Amendments–which requires the preclearance of voting and election rules in five Florida counties. The reason is straight-forward: Minorities across the state do not necessarily have a lesser chance of electing minority representatives when the proportion of minorities living in a district is lowered.
In 2003, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled 5-4 in Georgia v. Ashcroft that shifting African American voters from completely safe majority-minority districts to “coalitional” or “influence” districts, in which blacks did not constitute a majority of voters in a district, was not necessarily “retrogressive.” That is, the conservative majority ruled that the new federal and state senate legislative districts created by the Georgia state legislature did not violate Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits eroding “the position of racial minorities with respect to their effective exercise of the electoral franchise,” in select counties and states, mostly in the South.
Although not all African American and Hispanic elected officials in Florida support “unpacking” majority-minority districts so as to make them less concentrated, which in turn, dilutes the surrounding districts that have higher concentrations of whites, many do. As the Miami Herald reports, state senator Arthenia Joyner, a black Democrat from Tampa who “was elected to Senate District 18 with a black voting age population of only 39 percent,” responded to Sen. Gardiner’s faux legal analysis: “I don’t need a district with 60 percent black registration to win.”
Senator Gardiner might want to read the court’s opinion in Georgia v. Ashcroft, specifically page 16 of the majority opinion.
The ability of minority voters to elect a candidate of their choice is important but often complex in practice to determine. In order to maximize the electoral success of a minority group, a State may choose to create a certain number of “safe” districts, in which it is highly likely that minority voters will be able to elect the candidate of their choice. Alternatively, a State may choose to create a greater number of districts in which it is likely–although perhaps not quite as likely as under the benchmark plan–that minority voters will be able to elect candidates of their choice.
The Court continues: “Section 5 does not dictate that a State must pick one of these methods of redistricting over another.”
Florida’s Constitution, however, does. It states, in part
No apportionment plan or 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.
Rather than continuing to pack minorities into lopsided, majority-minority districts, which diminish their voting rights, the Florida legislature should abide by Amendments 5 & 6 and create “coalitional” or “influence” districts across the state that enhance the rights of minorities “to participate in the political process” or “elect representatives of their choice.”
It’s time, Senator Gardiner, for the Florida legislature to listen to the citizens of the Sunshine State, follow the Florida Constitution, and create Fair Districts, rather than ones that excessively pack minorities into overly safe districts.
