Florida has the distinction of being the most severely and illegally and unconstitutionally (unconstitutional under the fed constitution and unconstitutional under the Florida constitution!) and most unethically and most grotesquely gerrymandered congressional and state Senate and state House seats of all fifty states. I am disgusted. I am ashamed. I am angry at anyone and everyone who played a part in the process during the last forty years of gerrymandering. And I am angry at everyone who shrugged it off as just politics, as no big deal. It is wrong...for many reasons. Government is NOT legit if we allow our elected representatives to rig the lines to determine who will be the next batch of elected officials. The U.S. Supreme Court held in 1994, in a case where Republican Rod Sullivan represented me, a Democrat, that congressional lines must be at least reasonably compact to be constitutional. Florida fails. And the voters of Florida amended our Florida constitution to require that all congressional, state Senate, and state House districts must be drawn in a fashion which is reasonably compact, not designed to favor incumbents, not drawn to favor a political party, etc. Florida fails. Clearly the Republican legislature has been just as lawless as if they were bank robbers. Actually, worse. They robbed us of our representative government. I hope the reign of terror and lawlessness is about to come to an end. We might see a decision very soon which forces a redo on the line-drawing. The voters do not get a chance to cheer on the judges. We merely hope they will do right. But I do sincerely urge intolerance by voters toward the legislators who will come home and tell you that they did not intend to do anything wrong when they drew the gerrymandered lines. They DID intend to draw gerrymandered lines. They DID know it is unconstitutional. They DID know they were doing wrong. I have spent my entire life involved in this fight. First, way back, I objected to the lines in 1970 because those lines included multi-member districts which are a form of gerrymandering. Then I objected to the lines of 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2010, because those lines, growing worse and worse and worse, were rigged to overstuff a few districts with blacks as a way to pretend to help blacks while pursuing the clear goal of rigging Florida for more Republican districts than would happen through simple compact districts. NOW...assuming the courts are forceful in correcting the mess, I hold no hope that we are finished. I expect the Republican schemers to draw new illegal lines again and again and again. I only hope that we can put at end to the gerrymandering sometime in my lifetime! But that might require I outlive all the standard mortality tables.
Posted on: Wed, 04 Jun 2014 22:59:24 +0000
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