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By Bo Harmon Campaign Advisor, RepresentUs |
The once-a-decade redistricting process is still underway. With numerous lawsuits and overturned congressional maps nationwide, several of the final state maps for the upcoming midterms are still unknown.
Florida was one of those unfinished states until the first week of June. In May, Circuit Judge J. Layne Smith blocked the congressional map passed by the Florida Legislature for diluting the power of Black voters to elect candidates of their choice. This decision was appealed and the map was reinstated by an appeals court. It’s currently in place for the upcoming midterm elections.
Governor Ron DeSantis pushed the legislature to adopt this map. It’s one of the most extreme examples of partisan gerrymandering in the country because it would give his party a massively unfair advantage. Currently, Florida’s 27 congressional districts are split 16-11 in favor of Republicans. Now that Gov. DeSantis’s map has been confirmed for the 2022 midterms, the expected split will most likely result in a 20-8 result in favor of Republicans. (Florida received a new district following the most recent census).
A 20-8 congressional map doesn’t come close to reflecting the will of Florida’s voters. At the end of 2021, Republicans held a narrow 34.5% to 34.1% advantage in voter registration. In the 2020 presidential election, former President Donald Trump beat President Joe Biden – but only by a slim margin (51.2% to 47.9%).
Despite being evenly divided between the two major parties, Gov. DeSantis’s map would give Republicans more than 70% of congressional seats.
How does congressional redistricting work?
Although the exact rules vary, redistricting follows a similar process in each state. Every ten years, the U.S. Census Bureau counts the population of the country. Based on that information, each state redraws their congressional and state legislative districts to better reflect shifts in population.
At least, that’s how redistricting is supposed to work. In reality, rather than reflecting the will of the voters, politicians instead rig the process to benefit themselves and their party. This form of corruption is called gerrymandering.
Through gerrymandering, politicians can draw voting maps where they effectively choose their own voters. This practice isn’t new, but because of new technology, lines can be drawn to essentially guarantee victory for a politician or party.
The 2021 redistricting process was rife with partisan gerrymandering. States run by both Democrats and Republicans proposed and passed maps that maximized their partisan advantage.
This process has become rampant because, well, it’s legal. In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that partisan gerrymandering is “beyond the reach of federal courts.” This vague guidance means that both parties have pushed their political advantages as much as possible in the states they control. The end result is a map that dramatically decreased the amount of competitive districts across the country.
When most districts aren’t competitive, voters have less choice than ever. When defining competitive districts as “races won by less than 55% of the vote,” less than 40 out of the 435 congressional districts are predicted to be competitive in 2022. A decade ago, that number was 73.
When districts aren’t competitive, elections are decided before they even begin, which gives voters less choice over who represents them in Congress. These concerning numbers harm American voters, and RepresentUs is fighting to reverse this trend.
How we fought gerrymandering in Florida
RepresentUs fought hard to secure a fairer Florida political map. Initially, the Florida Senate proposed a map that was relatively fair. It received a “B” from the Princeton Gerrymandering Project.
Unfortunately, partisanship won out. The Florida House proposed and passed an “F” map. Despite already being extremely gerrymandered in his party’s favor, Gov. DeSantis vetoed that map – demanding an even more gerrymandered map.
In addition to advocating for the original Senate “B” map, RepresentUs promoted ads in key districts across the state to explain the complicated redistricting process and recruited over 250 citizens to make calls to the State House. We also partnered with former Republican Lt. Gov. and Former House Majority Leader Carlos Lopez-Cantera on an op-ed in the Miami Herald to reach voters across the state.
Following Judge Smith’s decision to block Gov. DeSantis’s map, Florida’s secretary of state challenged the decision to the State Supreme Court. Unfortunately, the Florida Supreme Court declined to take up the case earlier this month. This ultimately means the extremely gerrymandered map will be in use for the 2022 midterms while the lower district court considers the challenge to the rigged electoral map. RepresentUs will continue to advocate for fairer maps in Florida and across the entire nation as we have since the beginning of this long process.
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Contributors: Adam DuBard, RepresentUs Political Analyst; Ally Marcella, RepresentUs Research Analyst