Monday, January 9, 2012

Tuesday January 10: Get Wise To Florida Legislature's Redistricting Games

By Sylvia Gurinsky

This was a bad time for a recall of Excedrin and Gas-X: The start of the Florida Legislature's 2012 session.

No doubt the Tallahassee gang will cause plenty of headaches and heartburn during the next two months - starting with redistricting.

Lawmakers are already trying to figure out how to get around the will of voters. In 2010, Floridians, of course, decided that the redistricting process should be de-politicized as much as possible, and that districts should be drawn without favor to political parties. It's already led to some pathetic scenes - doubtless the most pathetic being efforts by Republicans to give a "safe seat" to U.S. Rep. Allen West, who doesn't even live in the district he represents now.

Equally pathetic are the various paths Florida residents have to travel in cyberspace to access the proposed maps. The main website is http://www.floridaredistricting.org/ . Once you get there, see if it's possible to find the proposed redistricting maps in less than three steps. You already know the answer.

The real answer is that you have to go to the Florida House website at http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Redistricting/Redistricting2012.aspx
and click on the "Bills" section to see proposed maps.

Then go to the "Representatives" section at the top of the page, find your representative and make your voice heard on redistricting.

Because if that's what it takes simply to view a map, think of what the legislature is doing to mess with what the voters asked for in November, 2010.

1 comment:

FlaFan said...

Hardly either. The point is that it's not easy for Floridians to access the maps.

If you already know what your congressional and legislative districts are going to look like this fall, congratulations. That puts you ahead of your 20 million fellow Floridians.