The Devil is the the details. It's things like the odd shaped projections that extend into urban areas that make the difference, it's subtle, but some of it is shown on the left side in the OP. Or the way the heart of Miami is split into 3 districts, 2 of which are huge red zones. Why divide a city into 3 parts? Do Miami residents want the same rep as the sugar farmers in the everglades? Of course not. It's diluting the minority vote.
The consequence of an election shouldn’t be getting gerrymandered into oblivion, regardless of which party does it.
There must be some confusion. We’re you referring to DeSantis winning most of his cases because that’s who I thought that’s who you were talking about?
No, I was referring to Marc Elias - the lawyer who will end up filing suit over this map if it remains
Thanks, that seems to suggest the 538 compact district using county lines is legal. There was no intent to favor or disfavor a political party as there were no party affiliations in the data used to draw the lines and the same applies for minorities. If you don't know where they are, how can you favor or disfavor them?
That's why there would be separate federal litigation. I wouldn't want to litigate a VRA case in the Florida state courts.
The only potentially problematic aspect of the map would be the Fifth District. Otherwise, that map would pass muster completely. And you could easily tweak the districts in and around Duval to satisfy the Florida Constitution and Voting Rights Act.
I can see that with the district inside another district. Maybe extend the boundaries of the fifth out to the Atlantic.
The Florida Legislature's plan that DeSantis vetoed actually remedied the problem: The Legislature's plan (on the right) groups the urban part of Jacksonville with the large POC populations in the same district and then gives the rural/suburban areas with high white populations their own district. DeSantis's map (the left) cracks them and then puts the heaviest Black population centers in a huge district with extremely Republican Clay and Nassau Counties to dilute their voting power. Here's another example of DeSantis cracking Black population centers in his map (where the Legislature didn't):
And to expect that people vote in a monolithic block just because of the color of their skin is rich... Not all people of color vote for one Political Party. I also remember some voting districts looking like snakes or some weird shape you'd see in a Rorschach test.
I wonder what percentage of registered voters in the last Gubernatorial race in AA districts versus mostly non-AA districts actually voted. Did the AA's come out and vote at a high percentage or not? And did the non-AA districts see that same high percentage of registered voter's votes being cast? Also, the OP is talking about losing the state by 2 to 5 percentage points but only winning 7 districts? How did that happen?
Qualifying for races closes in June. This map comes is too late for appropriate state court review. I don’t see the Florida courts having much to do with this. The Federal Court is going to have to intervene. Already a hearing set in May. The only way this survives is if the Fair Districts Amendment and Voting Rights Acts are declared unconstitutional and the US constitution is construed to permit the exclusion of representation based on race. I would add, too, that the rejection of legislatively drawn map weakens arguments centered on legislative prerogative. The DeSantis map and his spin are just blatant racism. But, those who long for Jim Crowe now feel free to act this was and this just makes DeSantis even more popular in the GOP war of white straight people versus everyone else. This is my post in the redux thread: His insistence on rejecting the legislature’s map and his elimination of African American majority districts in favor of white, GOP dominated districts is another “policy” that is going to be struck down. Especially after Walker’s opinion. DeSantis framed the former maps as illegal as race based. But, by so claiming and eliminating legislatively drawn African American districts, he actually showed an intent to exclude African American representation.
