Credit: Michael Moline/Florida Phoenix
The Florida House of Representatives on Wednesday morning passed the congressional redistricting map presented to them by Gov. Ron DeSantis, which could give Republicans up to four new congressional districts.
The final vote was 83-28. No Republicans debated the map in a session that lasted less than 90 minutes.
The vote took place as Jacksonville Democratic Rep. Angie Nixon, a candidate for U.S. Senate, disrupted the proceedings by shouting that the map “was out of order.”
The Florida Senate planned to vote on the map later Wednesday. That chamber took a break to review the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the state of Louisiana’s voting map, which concluded that lawmakers there had illegally used race when drawing up a new majority-minority district.
The House on a voice vote defeated a Democratic motion to delay in light of the ruling.
DeSantis had said previously that the Legislature would be “forced” to redraw the state’s map if the court weighed in as he predicted.
“Called this one months ago,” the governor posted on social media. “The decision implicates a district in FL — the legal infirmities of which have been corrected in the newly-drawn (and soon to be enacted) map.”
If the Senate passes the map and DeSantis signs it into law, Florida would become the latest state to redistrict its congressional delegation in the middle of the decade, following red states such as Texas, North Carolina, and Missouri.
Blue states such as California and Virginia have followed suit, all coming after President Donald Trump told Texas GOP lawmakers last year to do so to protect GOP control of the House in this year’s midterm elections.
During debate on the House floor, Democrats seized on an admission made Tuesday by Jason Poreda, the governor’s staffer who drew the map, that he did use partisan data in creating it. Florida’s Fair Districts Amendment passed by the voters in 2010 bans partisan gerrymandering.
“The man who drew this map testified under oath that he used partisan data to draw up every single district,” said House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell. “Every single one. And when the governor’s attorney was asked whether Democratic voters were being underrepresented in our congressional delegation, his answer was, ‘That this is a normative question.’
“Members, if we vote yes on this bill, it’s not just that we’re being misled, we are blessing this mess. The timing tells the rest. The governor announces his intention to redistrict, shortly after the president of the United States asked Republican-led states to do exactly that. There is no neutral explanation for that sequence of events.”
This story will be updated.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Contact Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and Twitter.
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