Alright, let’s say you are building an airplane. All of the aeronautical engineers are standing around and looking at the plan. These are the experts to determine if this plane will fly or not. Looking at the plane, there are some people concerned about the shape of wings. They look them over and realize that, even though they are a little flawed, the wings would still work and the plan would fly with those wings. The plan, according to these experts is ready to go.
But there is one problem with this plan. This plan has no engines or a tail section. Even with these important parts missing, these aeronautical engineers still say the plane is worthy of flying.
If you look at this scenario, one would say that these engineers are totally out of their mind…creating a plane that has fundamental pieces missing.
This is exactly what the Florida Supreme Court might do with the Florida Senate redistricting plan.
As was mentioned in our previous article about the Supreme Court and redistricting, the Court continues to look at the validity of the entire plan, and still continues to look at this plan district by district. Therefore, they aren’t looking at the law, making sure there are fair plans. And, honestly, if this plan does pass, I think it is fair to say that those on the Supreme Court that vote for the plan are lacking legal knowledge, thus shouldn’t even be on the Court in the first place.
On Friday, Supreme Court Justice Barbara Pariente even proved that the Court continues to be blind regarding this plan stating, “Speaking for the person that wrote it, it was pretty clear that there were certain districts that were specifically invalidated.’’ Don’t look a the district, look at the plan!
But back to the plane. Because the wings were fine (which are what the districts are), then the plane can easily fly without engines and a tail section (the entire plan). I challenge the Supreme Court to fly a engineless, tailless plane!
If this is how the Supreme Court is going to rule on this case, on a district by district basis (while only looking at the districts that they had problems with in the first place), then I must ask the court this precise, fundamental question:
“How can the Democratic Party gain a majority of seats with the current Senate plan?”
Pure and simple. If the Court says this is fair, show me, and other Democrats around the State of Florida, how the Democrats can get 20 or more seat in the Senate. If they can prove that this is possible, then one can say that the plan is legitimate.
Otherwise, this plan is just as corrupt as previous plans. If we look at the wording on the ballot in 2010, it states:
“Legislative districts or districting plans may not be drawn to favor or disfavor an incumbent or political party.”
So, Supreme Court, show me how this entire plan, not just certain districts but entire plan, doesn’t favor the Republican Party? The line above doesn’t mention anything about specific districts. But it DOES say “districting plans”, and “favor or disfavor an…political party”. Yet the Supreme Court is absolutely oblivious to this fact.
So, Supreme Court, the ball is in your court. If you end up favoring this plan, please have in your “decision for” the plan how the plan, as a whole, applies to the law. I’m afraid that the Court will not be able to make their case. Thus, do they even understand law? If not, that is pretty damn scary.
While I agree the sentiments of this article and agree 100% on the Supreme Court’s application of the law, reality is if you draw “fair districts” the Democrats will not have 20 seats which voted for Obama in 2008. The maximum would be 17 or 18.
Look at it this way. The court is directed to ensure that districts remain compact and maintain communities of interest. Most Democrats in the state are packed into African-American areas or into suburban Palm Beach and Broward counties. Geographic distribution and the need to have compact districts favors a permanent GOP majority, unless we learn to campaign in areas which vote for GOP Presidential candidates as we have many times in the past. We have won the types of seats that would be drawn by this map.
While the attempts of the GOP to squeeze some districts out of Broward/Palm Beach and cleverly district Central Florida have resulted in a net of 3-4 seats that they have skewed for partisan purposes it still does not get you to 20. That is unless you draw districts with odd shaped lines to get to a 20-20 parity, which would mean drawing parts of Martin County and the interior of the state into districts dominated by Palm Beach to maximize D numbers and the same for Collier/Lee into seats that are Broward based.
I do agree with what you are saying, but what I am asking is a little different. I am not asking for 20 seats that are Democratic, but 20 seats that Democrats can win.
In the current plan, the GOP has 21 “safe” seats. These are seats they will never, ever lose. Those are seats (of the current plan) 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 13, 16, 17, 18, 21, 23, 24, 26, 30, 32, 37, 38 and 40. Seats 15, 20 and 28 are “if Democrats get really damn lucky in a special election” type of seats. As far as the Democrats, there are only 10 safe seats.
The fact is that if the GOP already has 21 safe seats, that is all they need. They control the Senate for the next 10 years. It doesn’t matter what we do, they win those seats, hands down, and control the Senate. We can get a Blue Dog Democrat in those seats, but they will still vote for the Republicans. That is why the plan as a whole is flawed and easily favors one political party.
We have more Dems in the state than Republicans so we should have more districts than them under any non political process.
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We have the most registered voters in the state and yet some say we should just accept 15-17 districts? Heck no!