Proposals address districts, racial politics Some lawmakers say minority voting will be compromised

BRANDON LARRABEE

December 14, 2009

TALLAHASSEE - Measures aimed at keeping state lawmakers from crafting politically gerrymandered districts could become enmeshed in racial politics, with legislators questioning whether Florida could comply both with the proposed state constitutional amendments and the federal Voting Rights Act.

Some members of Congress, including U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Fla., are also warning that the proposals could end up diluting minority voting power in some parts of the state by placing too many restrictions on legislators who draw the districts every 10 years following the Census.

But supporters of the amendment, scheduled to be on the 2010 ballot, say those arguments amount to a smokescreen for elected officials whose real concerns are more about their own political power.

The amendments are in part a result of some voters' anger about politicians who use computer programs and reams of data to slice and dice the state into predictable districts.

Many Democrats argue that the state's voting registration numbers are relatively evenly split between the two parties, but the Legislature is dominated by large GOP majorities in both chambers.

Causing much of the concern about the amendments are requirements that lawmakers draw districts as compact as possible and attempt to avoid crossing city and county lines.

Those worried about the amendments' impact say that could thwart efforts to draw "minority access" districts, where a sizable amount but not a majority of the voters are from a minority group. A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case of Bartlett vs. Strickland, which dealt with similar redistricting restrictions in North Carolina, said only districts with a majority of voters drawn from a minority group were protected by the Voting Rights Act.

Cynthia Tunnicliff, counsel for the Senate Reapportionment Committee, told lawmakers that as many as five of the seven Senate seats held by African-Americans, including the one held by Sen. Tony Hill, D-Jacksonville, could be endangered if the amendment moved forward. Only two of the seven are the kind of "majority minority" districts that would be protected by the Voting Rights Act.

"If the new amendments pass I think it will be extremely difficult to withstand any challenge to a minority access district," she said.

Members of the committee are already considering legal action aimed at getting the Florida Supreme Court to again review the amendment following the federal ruling.

Sen. John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine, said the voting rights concerns could make the ballot language "misleading to the people of the state of Florida."

"They will not know what they're voting on," Thrasher told Senate colleagues at a committee meeting last week. "We have to find, if you can figure it out, some way in my opinion to get back to the Supreme Court of Florida and ask them to take a look at this ballot language in light of the Bartlett case and the requirements that will be placed on us."

The Florida Legislative Black Caucus has endorsed the proposal, but Sen. Gary Siplin, the Orlando Democrat who now chairs the group, has also worried about the impact of the amendments.

Meanwhile, Brown and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, wrote a letter to Rep. Dean Cannon, the Winter Park Republican set to become House speaker in late 2010, expressing some of the same fears.

"We are particularly concerned that passage of these amendments would result - however unintentionally - in a significant dilution of the voting rights of the African-Americans and Hispanics as well as a significant loss in the number of representatives elected from those communities," the two members wrote.

But Ellen Freidin, a South Florida lawyer who chairs the campaign by Fair Districts Florida to get the amendments approved, said worries about minority voting power are unfounded.

"These amendments have been so carefully drafted, not only to protect the voting rights of minorities but to enhance the rights of minorities in the state of Florida," she said.

Freidin points to language in the amendments that would specifically instruct those drawing the lines to comply with federal law and protect black and Latino voters.

"They won't be required to make a district compact if it diminishes the ability of minority voters to elect a representative of their choice," she said.

brandon.larrabee@jacksonville.com, (678) 977-3709