Our Recommendation: 2010 Florida Constitutional Amendments, continued

The following is our second installment analyzing and recommending the proposed state constitutional amendments that will be on the November ballot.

Last week, we recommended “yes” votes on Amendments 1, 2 and 8.

This week we examine Amendments 5 and 6, whose wording is almost identical. Both deal with apportionment — the drawing of legislative and congressional districts.

And as we did last week, we will apply the same test to Amendments 5 and 6 that we applied last week: Will these amendments increase or diminish your freedom if approved?

Before examining what they propose, our suspicions are high. We have wondered about the amendments when we see some of the names behind the group sponsoring the amendment, FairDistrictsFlorida.org.

When you check out the organization, you’ll find that it proudly touts that its honorary chairs include former Gov. and U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, Democrat; former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, Democrat; former Florida Comptroller Bob Milligan, Republican; environmental activists Nathaniel Reed, founder of 1000 Friends of Florida (mostly liberal group), and former County Judge Thom Rumberger; and Walter Dartland, longtime consumer advocate and director of Common Cause Florida.

The smell test here is peculiar. Could it be some influential Democrats are tired of Florida’s legislative and congressional delegations being Republican controlled?

In any event, look at the language of the amendments:

Amendments 5 & 6
Article III, Sections 20 and 21. Summary: Legislative and congressional districts or districting plans may not be drawn to favor or disfavor an incumbent or political party. Districts shall not be drawn to deny racial or language minorities the equal opportunity to participate in the political process and elect representatives of their choice. Districts must be contiguous. Unless otherwise required, districts must be compact, as equal in population as feasible, and where feasible must make use of existing city, county and geographical boundaries.

All of this sounds great and fair. Most everyone would agree that legislative and congressional districts should favor no one, especially political parties.

But as they say, the devil is in the details. In a report to the Legislature on these proposed amendments, Florida lawyer George Meros of the Gray Robinson law firm wrote:

“ … The requirement that every district be drawn so as not to favor or disfavor any incumbent or political party will spawn challenges to virtually every district, census tract by census tract, without guidance on what ‘favor’ or ‘disfavor’ means in this highly specialized context.

“These inquiries are not only more fact-specific but also more subjective and malleable than those previously considered by the court. The court will be required to create new legal standards for evaluating the intent of the Legislature and the political influence of minority groups to define the concept of compactness and to engage in a completely subjective analysis of whether the use of existing boundaries would have been feasible.

“This review will take place district by district and will require the court to consider the views of adversary interests. The new subjective and fact-specific inquiries will subject each district individually to attack, whether by political parties, incumbents, challengers or interest groups and will invite a proliferation of experts to analyze each district according to the new constitutional standards.

“Adversary interests can be expected not only to assail the legislatively drawn plan but to present plans that each purport to comply with the constitutional mandate. The thirty-day period allotted to the court will likely require it to appoint special masters to evaluate the evidence and argument presented by adversary interests.

“The Legislature … will be required to defend every boundary of every district against every attack … ”
Then multiply all of those challenges by the number of congressional districts. Aye-yi-yi.

Suffice it to say the intentions of these amendments are good. But their practicality is nightmarish. An avalanche of likely lawsuits will not increase freedom. What’s more, we can’t recall that being denied representation has been an issue in Florida. Vote no on both.