The Legislature's contempt for the public is showing again. The attempt to avoid a special session to fix the House redistricting is an affront to Florida voters.

Gov. Jeb Bush and House Speaker Tom Feeney are trying desperately to avoid calling a special session to fix what the Justice Department found wrong with the House redistricting plan. They want the same three-judge federal court that approved the Senate and congressional schemes to accept and impose a remedy fashioned exclusively by Feeney and his henchmen. The rest of the people's legislators would have no part in it.

Their arrogance is consistent, of course, with every previous step in the redistricting process. What they heard at public hearings meant nothing. Districts were drawn solely to expand the Republican majority and protect its incumbents. The right of the people to cast meaningful votes was abridged time after time after time through the creation of even more districts that are so heavily weighted to one party or the other that the elections in November will be largely meaningless. The Congress of Vienna, which arbitrarily partitioned Poland among Russia, Prussia and Austria in 1815, was scarcely less cynical. It is shameful that the three-judge court is allowing the bulk of this travesty to take effect.

A special session would no doubt be inconvenient and embarrassing to the Republican leadership, and not only for the expense. Throughout what passed for debate, the Democrats had warned explicitly that the new District 101 in Collier and Broward counties would violate the federally guaranteed voting rights of Hispanics in Collier. The Republicans paid no more attention to that warning than to any of the many other protests from the heavily outnumbered Democrats. Now that the Justice Department has disapproved the district, there should be no doubt where the blame lies.

Yet it would be insult heaped upon injury for the Gang of a Few to try to finesse the problem in any other way than through a special session. At least five and as many as six additional districts would have to be redrawn to make 101 legally presentable. Florida's Constitution, adopted before the passage of the federal Voting Rights Act, provides only two methods to redistrict the Legislature. If the Legislature fails, the state Supreme Court can finish the job. Nothing specifies what happens when federal authority intervenes. The spirit of the Constitution, however, should control. The only conceivable alternative to a special session would be a negotiated settlement to which the minority party would agree; that is essentially how a federal court dispute over the Senate District 21 gerrymander was resolved in 1996. But in that instance, several elections had already been held. Under present circumstances, it is fanciful to imagine Feeney offering any compromise that the Democrats would accept.

The Justice Department rejected House District 101 because it weakened the voting strength of Collier Hispanics in order to form a new, presumably Republican district comprising mostly non-Hispanic voters in Broward County. This was part of a larger scheme to maximize GOP strength by balkanizing Broward, where Democrats predominate. Presently, Broward has 11 of its own House seats and shares only one with another county. Under the new plan, it shares six.

Unfortunately, the Voting Rights Act protects only the voting strengths of ethnic minorities, and provides for Justice Department preclearance only in certain counties. Nothing protects nonethnic voters from being misused for political gain. Republicans in states with Democratic legislatures have been victimized with as much malice as the Republicans have treated Democrats, independents and minor parties in Florida.

This week's developments are further proof of the need for an independent redistricting commission that would be appointed and supervised by the Supreme Court. It shows also why Florida should redistrict in the first year following a census, as most states do, rather than wait until very nearly the last minute. Meanwhile, the losing parties in the federal lawsuit should appeal to the Supreme Court on the off chance that its conscience, at least, might be susceptible of shock.

Back to Opinion

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright

From the Times
Opinion page